#INBOUND22 RevOps And How To Achieve Scaled Growth

LIVE FROM INBOUND22

Without a unified foundation, RevOps is just a buzzword. Alison Elworthy and Sid Kumar explain to us at INBOUND22 how this new methodology aligns with the popular flywheel and the customer journey. They shared with the audience how HubSpot has elevated operations teams, helping to build an operating system that supports scaled growth. To ensure that all businesses can apply this methodology, the summarised the key pillars to get your RevOps journey started.

Teams are often isolated, utilising software and platforms that they do not share and that, most importantly, do not speak with each other. If this sounds familiar, there is something you need to face right now: you are not getting a 360-degree understanding of your customers. The more software you use, the less clear that picture will be, and the more difficult it will be for you to clarify it. And that is what RevOps is here for.

What Is *Really* Rev Ops About?

As defined by Alison Elworthy, Executive VP of Revenue Operations at HubSpot, RevOps refers to the processes, systems, and the people who control how your business generates revenue. If you were looking for a word to describe it, that would be “mindset”. RevOps is the practice of unifying operations across your go-to-market functions to remove friction in your business and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

It is about alignment, about empowerment, about better decisions, and faster strategies. The right foundation to benefit from the scalability that RevOps brings depends, however, on different pillars that, if not put in place solidly, could jeopardise any efforts to improve the processes your teams follow. These pillars rely on different elements that Alison and Sid clearly highlighted.

#1 Unified People's Strategy

Alignment and Collaborations

Collaboration might have become a buzzword, and that is dangerous. There is no real understanding of what it means to support each other and to collaborate. And the reality is that, without alignment, without a common goal, a shared approach, collaboration becomes very difficult. Like two people trying to move a boat but rowing in opposite directions.

Skills and Capabilities

Better alignment may require for teams and departments to have a deeper look at their capabilities and question whether they are enabling their members to be as connected as possible with other teams. This is particularly common in siloed companies where marketing, sales, and service, are completely separate, and are oblivious of the challenges and struggled that each of the teams endures through their everyday.

Career Development

And that crossover of skills needs to translate in opportunities and movement within teams where members of each department progress and are promoted to different parts of the company. If it is the same company, and all people share a common understanding, moving between parts of the company should be something not only available but encouraged, ensuring that the team has a diverse set of skills.

#2 Standardised Mechanisms

Planning and Execution

The exercise of planning includes, almost inherently, discussion, and, with discussion, human beings learn to better understand each other. Planning allows teams to share goals and aims, whilst contributing with new innovative ideas to something that might be traditional, old-fashioned, and outdated. As mentioned above, teams will have different worries, different objectives, and, overall, different perspectives when it comes to their role within the company. Let’s listen to them!

Unified Approach

And with those common goals identified, the vision becomes one! Not only will teams acquire a better and more coherent understanding of what they are meant to do and how they are meant to do it, but they will also consider it theirs. Having been developed from an exercise of discussion and debate, each member of the team will recognise a little bit of themselves within that approach, making it easier for them to adopt and further develop it.

Dynamic Planning

Yes, to develop it, and develop it, and develop it… Dynamically! Because the approach that the RevOps methodology will grant you is not a one-off magic formula. The dynamism that RevOps offers can help companies encourage research and critical thinking within their teams, whilst making sure that they are adaptable to new trends, new data, and new ways of doing business.

#3 Data-Driven Automation

Analytics and Insights

This standardisation will often involve a CRM that allows for all data to be in one place, helping companies obtain information from a single source. The centralisation of your data, even if it involves integrations, will help you get better insights and more accurate analytics, which would lead to a clearer understanding of what is working and what is not working for your business.

Systems Automation

The curation of such approach, yet, cannot be something that is redone over and over, it must come from the identification of patterns and the standardisation of processes, both elements that can be translated into automation. Your systems should reflect some kind of automation, making sure that these processes are scalable and applicable across different members of the same team, different departments, and different business units.

Technology Stack

Whilst having a platform that does all would be ideal, that is sometimes not possible. And that is when integrations come into place! Integrations can allow for your tech-stack to be well-connected and synchronised, preventing any data issues that could arise from having different platforms managing the same data. It might be necessary, but the key is to find the best way of doing it! Did we say that HubSpot has one of the most complete integration ecosystems?

And, What Else?

Functional Fuel

The RevOps mindset elevates what, until now, we considered operations and becomes part of every department within a company. This prevents the operations team from becoming problem solvers! They should not spend their day putting out fires but making sure that processes are improved and made more efficient, guaranteeing all teams, marketing, sales, and customer service, are appropriately supported.

Horizontal Alignment

But the implementation of RevOps to a business strategy should not neglect the customer journey. That should still remain that the top of you go-to-market strategy! With a more aligned team, understanding what the customer needs in every single phase of the journey becomes much easier, and enables teams to interact with prospects and customers in a valuable, relevant, and consistent way, delivering the right message, at the right time.