Excerpt from Chapter 2: What is RevOps? Creating a shared definition
Though the word 'people' was not in every expert's definition, many implied that ‘people’ are a major aspect of RevOps, so it’s not an addition totally out of left field. ‘People’ refers to people in the company, people on the RevOps team, and people as prospects and customers. The word and work of enablement, which is often included in RevOps definitions, is also very people-focused, enabling people. Insights and advising help people make decisions… a case could be made for many words to relate to people! Let’s look at some quotes from the experts who mentioned or implied people as a big part of RevOps.
Jeff Ignacio said, “There are four key elements and four key principles and I always work through: process, enablement, advisory, and systems. And we do so with my first principles of focus, alignment, simplicity, and teamwork…”
[More about advisory] “You'll often see folks talk about people, process, and systems. Adding systems is too narrow of a definition, and data is too narrow of a definition as well. So we're talking about advisory, you're talking about decision making [which] is often best when it's informed and you can create a set of decisions based on informed risk taking. Behind that is the data, the information. And beyond that, the insights and the narrative that you're trying to surface and develop. And so some folks call it a data maturity journey, or data cycle, whatever you want to call it, but at the end of the day, data is a tool, and it's not the real reason that advisors look to RevOps leaders for support, they're really looking for those critical insights that allow them to gain an edge.”
Rosalyn Santa Elena said, “Revenue operations is really the operational foundation across all of your revenue teams. It's the process by which you acquire revenue, literally. I look at RevOps in two different ways. One is your overall revenue process, so the actual business process of driving and acquiring revenue. And then there's also the revenue operations as a function within an organization and that is really your traditional operations team or function of the team of people that support the end-to-end revenue journey. If you think about from top of funnel prospecting potential leads all the way through when a prospect becomes a customer, and then after the customer becomes a repeat customer in terms of renewing, expanding, upselling, and then continuing to drive value for a customer. The other thing I would say is that I look at operations as the foundation and the engine that drives your revenue process, so it's really the people, the processes, [and] technology. And if you think about the strategy, the data, all the underlying things other than being the actual customer-facing seller.”
Jonathan Fianu said, “It is optimizing the revenue engine. I see RevOps as having three core pillars. The first one is all around the tools and solutions that the revenue engine, the commercial function, uses to deliver on its goals. Your tech stack and optimizing that area, primarily for the sales team but you should be thinking about it from a data point of view. So how does information flow in and out, how can you start to inform the business in a useful way? And how do you have consistency? I've got some guiding principles around having the CRM at the heart of that stack. So, the second pillar is that around enablement, so making sure that you're creating a sales culture of excellence and that any new sales members can be onboarded in a seamless and efficient way for the business, but also how is that information visible. And then the third pillar is then all around people in the pipeline, how do you start to augment the structure to better deliver on the goals and making sure that those goals are aligned with the targets of the business.”
Karen Steele said, “[RevOps is] the foundation of all of the revenue processes that were previously siloed. So by revenue processes, I mean all of the technology and systems, all of the data, all of the processes, how people are aligned, to get the company humming, in terms of their go-to-market planning, in execution and even measurement are the metrics around that. Typically every company is a little bit different...RevOps has evolved to so many companies bringing it all into one team. Some companies aren't reorganizing the people, but they're looking at the concept and trying to have some alignment around those four things: people, process, data, and the technologies.”
Mallory Lee said, “I define revenue operations as an integral function that unites people and processes with technology to produce data and insights needed to run our business. It is literally an engine that keeps the business moving forward in an optimized way.”
Jenna Hannington said, “Revenue Operations is the engine that drives alignment across marketing, sales, and client success. Whether it’s an individual person, a centralized team, or a company mandate, the goal of RevOps is to define process across the customer lifecycle, introduce internal efficiencies, increase productivity, and allow companies to effectively scale.”
Jerry Bonura said, “They’re the people in the team that take your company from an art to a science and make you like a machine …I actually give a presentation on this at the Outreach conference…about being scalable, repeatable and predictable, as the three phases of a company that their go-to-market goes through.”
Remotish CEO Nicole Pereira’s summer 2020 definition was, "RevOps are the people, processes, tools in place to support all revenue-generating professionals in a business."
As Nicole was my boss and book advisor during the time this book research was taking place, it does make sense that the new definition still aligns (see what I did there) with hers. Though I will point out that support can be a controversial word when ops is trying to be strategic vs. tactical and not just be a support ticket / help desk 100% of the time, so the word ‘support’ is not included in the current definition.
