How to Accelerate B2B Growth through Customer-Centric Revenue Operations

The Power and Potential of Revenue Operations (RevOps)

Is your organisation fully on board with customer experience (CX) thinking?

Certainly, most business leaders agree CX has become a critical point of difference and a revenue driver. But knowing something isn’t the same as doing it. For instance, most people also agree that a healthy diet and exercise are key to long-term health. But how many of us actually resist that packet of crisps and go out for a run every day?

To drive revenue, departments need to work together to create a seamless, end-to-end customer experience. However, few companies truly operate this way. Instead, they continue to silo revenue functions into a series of teams with single-purpose platforms and processes, resulting in:

• Misaligned incentives

• Broken handover processes

• Poor data consistency and reliability

• Lack of tech stack integration

• Competing sources of information, reporting and forecasting

• Duplication of work

• Low cross-functional collaboration and trust

The root problem is that many business leaders are accustomed to one way of seeing the world. They have spent their entire career operating in heavily structured systems designed around a company-centric approach towards business.

However, digital transformation means B2B is now a customer-centric world. Increased digital sophistication means buyers are in control. And they want seamless, humanised, B2C-level experiences.

But change is hard. While many companies preach the need for superior CX, they hesitate to invest in overhauling their system to create it. They focus on incremental improvements, such as better tools, but don't tackle the main issues of disunity and fragmentation.

But propping up a legacy approach towards revenue growth will only keep companies treading water in the short term. Improving resilience requires companies to change their systems and adopt a new, customer-focused approach for revenue operations.

What is Revenue Operations?

Revenue operations (or RevOps) is an approach that drives more predictable and sustainable revenue and streamlines opportunities for growth. It does so by bridging the gaps between organisational silos and revenue functions.

RevOps recognises the impact different teams (marketing, sales, finance, etc.) have on one another and how siloed operations result in friction. It brings everyone together around a single revenue process shaped by what matters the most — the customer.

Using a RevOps framework to orchestrate growth operations in a collaborative, comprehensive, and cross-functional manner makes it easier to:

• Align customer-focused strategies and elevate your delivered experience,

• Streamline go-to-market (GTM) operations efficiency,

• Accelerate business growth over the long term.

The RevOps concept isn't new, and much like marketing operations, it has developed to become its own essential function. As outdated growth methods clash with digital business styles, this approach has become more popular recently.

Why You Should Root RevOps in Customer Experience

The conversation around revenue operations management has largely focused on process efficiency. But we feel a more strategic, transformative understanding of RevOps is necessary to achieve long-term growth.

In the B2B world, you can compete on product, price, operational excellence, or customer relationship. But eventually, products or services can be copied, prices undercut, and even operational excellence can be replicated. What competitors cannot duplicate is the value of your customer relationships. And these relationships stand on the shoulders of your customer experience.

As such, RevOps can’t just be about increasing revenue productivity. Instead, how you create, market, sell, and deliver products and services must be rooted in improving CX.

Yes, operational productivity is important. A better buying experience requires a platform that unites technology, data, and processes to link revenue-related tasks.

However, efficiency alone won’t revolutionise your business in the long term. You may end up with the same mediocre sales and marketing process, but just faster and more efficient.

To maintain a competitive edge and sustainable growth, revenue operations need to be about continuously delighting your customers.

After all, today’s B2B buyers are a savvy lot. They know there's a different way to do business and are quite willing to go elsewhere.

To truly unlock the potential of RevOps, you need to reorganise your technology, business structures, and revenue processes around customer experience. Your various revenue functions need to provide the things B2B customers are looking for, namely:

• Personalisation with tailored interactions and offerings that are truly relevant to their needs,

• Speed and convenience via streamlined omnichannel buying journeys and self-service options,

• Positive outcomes through sensemaking and participation to deliver on promises and realise value.

Successful RevOps starts with the idea of maximising customer experience, not maximising profit. This goal should be what guides each major customer-facing piece of your company. The driving force that knits together your various revenue functions into a seamless omnichannel customer journey.

And by getting off the couch and taking action on CX you reduce customer churn and increase customer lifetime value. Ultimately, this results in stronger relationships, more revenue, and greater shareholder value for your organisation.

Benefits of a CX-centric RevOps Approach

Limited communication between departments, misaligned data and targets, and a fragmented customer view hinder delivering exceptional customer experiences. RevOps offers a data-driven solution to these issues by building flexible systems that improve cross-departmental automation, visibility, and intelligence.

Platform Alignment and Data Unification

Revenue operations teams should unify revenue data, align technology systems, and eliminate extra software. Ensuring that enabling technologies (marketing automation platforms, CRM software, accounting tools, etc.) connect across functional silos improves operational efficiency.

It allows companies to automate the buyer’s journey and accelerate pipeline velocity while ensuring compliance across all channels. All teams and internal stakeholders have a common, transparent view of data insights, so everyone knows what’s going on. And by ensuring revenue processes are connected, efficient and predictable, RevOps teams create a solid foundation for a winning B2B experience.

Comprehensive Planning and Forecasting

When revenue data is unified, it reveals clearer insights into the target audience's preferences and buying behaviours. It is critical for developing the comprehensive user profiles necessary to build effective account-based experiences.

A single data source provides a full business overview, helping management identify growth potential and set realistic performance goals. Understanding the product-to-cash lifecycle allows revenue teams to work across departments to achieve company objectives and scalable growth.

Operational Visibility and Accountability

RevOps provides visibility into growth objectives and the processes of executing strategies. Everyone involved can clearly see the status of their deals across all businesses, territories, segments, and within their departments.

At any point, every team member understands their role in delighting the customer. With knowledge of the right actions, a well-defined timeline, and access to content resources, they create a smooth buyer experience.

This increased visibility results in shared accountability from front-line staff to the C-suite. Instead of separate, clashing functions, your revenue process works as a single, all-inclusive B2B experience.

Operational Resilience

RevOps streamlines priority setting and decision-making for key activities to keep the business on track. When there are market fluctuations, when a major client goes under, or there are production shortages, RevOps can quickly pivot operations. By adjusting their forecasting using all the data available, RevOps can create ‘what-if’ scenarios to address deviations from norms. Doing so allows them to adapt quickly and implement new plans to meet changing customer needs, resulting in greater resilience.

Adopting RevOps to Fuel Your CX Growth Engine

RevOps requires cross-functional alignment and accountability among everyone involved in the product-to-cash lifecycle. This list can include:

• Product Design

• Marketing Operations

• Sales Operations

• E-commerce Operations

• Customer Success

• Partner Operations

• Information Technology

• Order Management & Fulfilment

• Billing and Finance

• Compensation Design & Strategy

Truly effective RevOps requires a deep alignment of people, data, processes, and technology within and between these teams. So, to spearhead collaboration at your organisation, you must first:

• Set up planning sessions to assess the entirety of your customer journey and create a shared vision among stakeholders.

• Decide how to set up revenue operations in your company to improve customer experience (options range from a highly centralised approach to a more hybrid, hub-and-spoke solution).

• Establish customer-driven growth goals and build shared metrics that you can track transparently.

• Identify a customer-focused leader with the cross-functional experience necessary to influence change on a large scale.

These discussions are critical for addressing potential barriers to implementing a RevOp approach in your organisation.

Some stakeholders might hesitate because of valid concerns about the potential risks associated with large-scale, complex data integration. There could also be a political struggle over who RevOps will report to.

For instance, will the company create a new Chief Revenue Officer position? Or would the RevOps team fall under the purview of a different department head, such as the COO? You must also consider how to handle team members who are unwilling to embrace a more cross-functional culture. It will take time to build consensus and hash out the details.

By laying the groundwork, you can develop a revenue model ready for the future that supports your customers and your organisation. While the idea of RevOps restructuring might seem overwhelming, the implementation shouldn’t be overly disruptive if done well. Just make sure you have stakeholder agreement, a coherent plan, and proper change management processes in place.

Also, remember that you don’t have to restructure everything immediately in a vain pursuit of instant operational perfection. Instead, focus on identifying what is (and isn’t) currently working with your experience to gain, retain and grow customer relationships. From there, you can steadily make the necessary changes to align everything to improve CX and achieve revenue goals.

Some business leaders will undoubtedly be resistant to change because transformation costs could outweigh the potential benefits. They will argue that ‘Things are working OK today, so why fix something that isn't broken yet?’.

But simply maintaining the status quo is just not good enough anymore. You will not win in the digital economy by clinging on to old business models. Ultimately, your business will have to adopt new, customer-oriented approaches towards revenue to survive and thrive.

Taking the Next Steps with 1827 Marketing

The alignment created by RevOps is foundational to improving the buying experience for users. To fully tap into growth possibilities, the focus on efficiency should shift to a more strategic method for enhancing customer experience.

RevOps can’t just be about ‘revving up’ legacy marketing and sales processes. Instead, it should be a transformative process aimed at creating personalised, uncomplicated customer experiences and outcomes that build valuable relationships.

When you view RevOps through a CX perspective, you'll see how investing in better experiences leads to increased revenue for your business.

If you're interested in learning more about combining B2B marketing, sales, and customer success to improve your brand's customer experience, please get in touch.