RevOps Co-op Weekly #11 - Where should revenue operations report to?
Spoiler alert - revenue operations works best when the leader is on equal footing with the vice presidents of sales, marketing, and customer success.
RevOps Co-op provides resources, content and community for those who ❤️ revenue operations. This weekly newsletter features collected tweets, posts and thoughts on a variety of RevOps topics. We also have a private Slack community with > 700 RevOps pro’s - click here to join.
🚨 Free swag alert 🚨 Fill out this brief survey on GTM tools and systems you use and we’ll send you some RevOps Co-op Swag!
Who Should Revenue Operations Report To? 🤔
We had a question in the RevOps Co-Op Slack channel that we just couldn’t ignore:
“Does anyone have any strong thoughts/feelings about where RevOps should report up to?”
It turns out the answer is YES. We all have strong opinions about this topic.
Spoiler alert - most think revenue operations works best when the leader is on equal footing with the vice presidents of sales, marketing, and customer success.
Who Should Rev Ops Report To?
Ideally, the Vice President of Revenue Operations should report to the Chief Revenue Officer. The Chief Revenue Officer also oversees marketing, sales, and customer success leadership teams. The VP of Revenue Operations should be on equal footing with the marketing, sales, and customer success leadership teams.
Why?
Cédric Venard, VP Operations at Praxedo says:
“From my point of view, the main focus of Ops, in general, is not what's best for a specific department but what's best for the whole company, in all its dimensions.”
According to Sarah Sheehan, Senior Manager and Principal Revenue Operations Business Architect:
“The Chief of Revenue Operations is the gold standard for where the SVP of Revenue Operations should report. That being said, marketing, sales, and customer success should also be under the CRO. They should be partners in developing the roadmap driven by corporate strategy initiatives to drive revenue and increase retention.”
An Acceptable Alternative
Younger organizations often don't have the budget to create a multi-tiered executive structure. Many leadership team members are considered "player-coaches" and may even serve as their own operations "expert." In these cases, it makes sense for revenue operations to report to the Chief Operations Officer or the Chief Finance Officer.
Because the Chief Operations Officer often also oversees information technology, it isn’t a big stretch to keep the four pillars of revenue operations (insights, enablement, tools, process) where they should be. It can be more difficult to retain the tools expertise in revenue operations and not in IT if the department reports up to the CFO, who is generally more focused on insights than the technology needed to generate the data. On the other hand, it can be beneficial to have functions like a sales deal desk report into the CFO as it fast tracks the development of opportunity approval policies.
Whether you report up to the CFO or COO, they must be willing to help maintain neutrality and enforce policies on revenue operations’ behalf.
What Doesn’t Work?
I’m afraid to be absolutely honest. Here goes…
Too many companies create a "revenue operations" role that is the equivalent of a one-man-band. You'll be responsible for all the instruments, and because no one can do everything at once, it's going to sound like a hot mess.
If a business is going to create a revenue operations department, they should understand the following:
- It’s not reasonable to ask one person to manage both your CRM and marketing automation platform
- A person who is in charge of managing systems will not have the time to write your reports
- A person who is writing reports will not have the time to write content and manage digital marketing platforms
There are some unicorns out there who can do it all. The question is:
Should you expect them too?
No.
In order do a good job at any operations role, you need headcount and executive support. If you see a role that combines sales and marketing ops, the job responsibilities are all encompassing, and you’ll be reporting to a functional executive, run away. It’s a sure sign operations isn’t valued.
Read the full blog post on this topic here 👉🏻 Where should revenue operations report to?
🐦 This week in #RevOps Twitter
Agreed…although I’d replace sales ops with RevOps
Velocity > Speed 🏎
So true, EX + CX = 🚀
📚 Your curated #RevOps reading list
10 Reasons Why your next CRO should be a Revenue Operations Leader, from the SaaSSales blog
With all of the buzz about Revenue Operations lately, you have probably heard suggestions that the next step in a career for a RevOps Leader is to move into a Chief Revenue Officer role. Or maybe a Chief Marketing Officer role. Or a Chief Operations Officer role.
Or maybe forget all of the above and become a CEO of your own Revenue Operations consulting firm.
A CRO role may be the next step in the career path for a RevOps executive, but it may not be either, and that’s okay. But, there are a number of reasons why it would make sense that a CRO should come from a Revenue Operations background.
How to Land a Successful Virtual Sales Kickoff in 2021, from the Highspot blog
Sales kickoffs – or SKOs – are essential for every sales organization’s success.
Not only are they key to landing your go-to-market strategy for the upcoming year, but one of the few times your entire sales team will be together, making them valuable opportunities for camaraderie and connection.
Though an in-person SKOs may no longer be possible, that doesn’t mean you can’t deliver a show-stopping virtual event. The key is to focus on educating and inspiring your team at three critical points – pre-, during-, and post-SKO – so they have the training and motivation they need to succeed in the new year. This guide answers questions like:
What makes sales kickoff training effective?
How do you prepare for a virtual sko?
How do you engage salespeople during a virtual sko?
How do you continue training post sko?
What are the best 2021 sales kickoff themes?
How Hilton Saved $1 Billion in Costs, Retains Talent and Delights Customers, from the Salesforce Blog
“How you treat your team members guides how they treat your customers,” said Chris Silcock, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Hilton.
This is a simple message and one you’ll also see in a Forbes Insights report, The Experience Equation: How Happy Employees and Customers Accelerate Growth, which identified a correlation between employee experience (EX), customer experience (CX), and growth.
The study found that companies that were hyperfocused on enhancing their employee engagement ultimately had higher customer engagement levels and amassed 1.8 times more revenue growth (nearly double) than organizations that solely focused on customers. Conversely, the respondents indicated that just focusing on customers did not correlate to higher EX or revenue.
Funl is an operating system for your GTM team that provides end-to-end, full funnel analytics and insights that keep marketing, sales and customer success teams aligned and working seamlessly together to drive more revenue growth for your business.