It’s “strategic planning season” for many companies. I sit in countless discussions and reviews, led by RevOps teams. They are presenting the strategic goals and numbers for the coming year. In addition, there have been a lot of RevOps conferences, where these leaders talk about developing the function.
While none of these discussions have been “wrong,” I worry that so much more can be accomplished.
Too many discussions are about the numbers and doing the math. RevOps teams have access to data and analytics many of us never imagined possible. In discussing the strategic goals for the organization, most take the numbers, run the math based on growth objectives, identifying plans for the coming year. The talk about the number of resources that need to be in place in each function, based on the analysis of the past year. They look at comp expectations, perhaps tweaking the plans to meet certain budgetary or other goals. The present endless models on selling activities, outlining monthly and quarterly goals for demand/lead gen, outreach, meetings, top of pipeline, pipeline, renewal/retention, comp models and so forth.
Achieving next fiscal year goals becomes simply a matter of running the equations and doing the math.
I sit in these meetings, listening to the issues identified by the RevOps teams:
- “40% of our people are making quotas….. Based on this, we need to look at these activities, headcount, spending…..”
- “Our ramp time for sales productivity is 2 years…… We need to look at onboarding this many people to have them up to full productivity in two years….”
- “We need to build our comp plan to reinforce the 10 strategic objectives we have for the coming year….”
- “Our win rates are 25%, so to achieve our goals for the next fiscal year, we need to have our pipelines tracking to these numbers…. we need these resources to support this plan….”
- “We need to increase top of funnel by 50%…… this means we need to invest $X in demand gen…. $Y in lead gen….. $Z in social visibility……”
- “We need to maintain retention at 92%, to do this we need to add more……”
- …… and it goes on and on…….
I wonder about the purpose of the meetings, they are just parroting the results of the math models/equations. It’s pretty easy just to look at the final reports.
In fairness, these RevOps organizations are doing what they have been told to do, run the numbers, develop the models. It’s part of the performance culture we’ve adopted about “managing to the numbers.” This mindset is focused on just running the math to tell us what it takes to achieve our goals. Want to 2X ARR, we have the equations for that. Want to drive recurring revenue, we have the equations for this.
And RevOps has the tools and analytics to run all these models to give us the answers needed to achieve our goals.
But RevOps can and must do much more. RevOps, can help us drive richer conversations about, “Why are these things happening…… What would it take to change…… What should we do differently…….?”
I tend to be a pain in the ass when I sit in these meetings (OK, I’m a pain in the ass all the time). I ask crazy questions like, “Why are only 40% of your people making their quotas, what do we need to change to double that?” Or, “Why does it take 2 years to fully ramp someone, I see some of your top performers reach that level after one year. What are they doing, how do we leverage that with the rest of the organization?” Or, “Why are you using only comp plans to drive performance? There are many other ways to drive performance? How are you leveraging those? How do you simplify and better focus your comp plans? Or, and regular readers know my obsessions with win rates, “What does it take to move your win rate from 25% to 40%+?”
While RevOps may not know the solutions to the issues, sales/marketing/CS management may have to figure these answers out. But RevOps has the data that can drive the conversations!
Other than the CRO, RevOps has a unique view of the organization. They can look across all aspects of the organization and identify potential performance issues. Other executives, whether they are in marketing/sales/CS execution, tend to get tunnel vision, focusing only on their organizations. They have limited visibility of what the rest of the Revenue Generation team is doing.
RevOps has a unique view, based on comprehensive data and analytics, to identify challenges and ask the question, “What if we changed?” They can and should facilitate the discussions around how we improve.
Every organization must look to constantly improving, to refining what they currently do, to considering changing what they do. Rather than running the numbers and extending them, RevOps must drive the discussion, “How do we get better?”
RevOps must start to view itself as the change agent, to drive constant improvement, constant learning, constant growth. Anyone can run the numbers. But it takes a strategic, problem solving perspective to challenge them to see how we get better.
RevOps can and must be more than a “scorekeeper.”
Afterword: Below is the normal AI generated discussion of this post. It’s actually pretty interesting, but they do repeat themselves a little toward the end. Struggling with training the AI not to do what I do too often.
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