Why You Should Be Using a RevOps Framework
One of the most important considerations for modern businesses is understanding the role of customer experience. This is because it’s now more than just about getting customers to buy your products or services. Customers today look at the entire customer journey as an experience. When it comes to this, many companies are still struggling with how to measure customer experience. There are some great frameworks out there for marketers and strategy specialists that can help you improve your customer experience practices. One such framework is the RevOps framework. This framework has been designed to help companies that want to establish more collaboration between their marketing, sales, and customer success departments that focuses on maximizing revenue through improved customer experience. Here are some reasons why you should use RevOps to make your business grow.
What is the RevOps Framework?
RevOps is a comprehensive framework for improving customer experience with the intention to maximizing revenue growth. It was designed to help you create a structured process for improving your relationship with customers, creating a longer retention rate and creating brand advocates. RevOps in general will work on internal needs, freeing up your team to focus on the ideal customer.
So...why is this important?
It enables you to measure customer experience in a way that other frameworks typically don’t. This means you can evaluate how your customers feel about your business from the moment they enter it, throughout their interactions with it, and all the way up to when they make a purchase.
As a result, this should enable you to better understand what customers want, need, and expect from your business. And if done correctly, this should also help you identify opportunities for improvement that will have a direct impact on how much money your business makes. If you want to grow your business and get ahead of the competition, using RevOps may be just what you need!
Who Should Use It
Anyone who wants to improve their customer experience while maximizing revenue should use the RevOps framework. This includes any type of company, from a small business to a Fortune 500 company. Does a company with less than 10 employees need a dedicated RevOps team? Most likely not but they can most definitely establish systems and processes that could make it easier in the future as their company grows.
It is generally accepted that when your company has 50+ employees that you should have a small team dedicated to the art of RevOps. If you are below that number (which most small businesses in the US are), you can easily form an internal committee and/or bring an external consultant to heal establish aspects of the RevOps framework so that the challenge later on is less hectic...because it will be.
You should use this framework if you want to get ahead of your competition and increase customer loyalty. The RevOps framework will help you create a more cohesive customer experience that is based on real data from your customers. It will also allow you to measure customer experience more easily and figure out what will make them loyal to your brand. You can even build a better connection with your customers, which will make it easier for them to convert into repeat customers.
Implementing RevOps
There are a few ways to implement RevOps into your business strategy. Some of the best ways include:
Upgrading your lead scoring system, so you know when a lead is ready to buy from your company.
Developing a better understanding of customer behavior that will help you understand when customers have been turned off by something.
Developing a better understanding of what content customers want in order to build a strong relationship with them before they even become a customer.
Making sure your website and marketing material meets customer expectations in terms of design, content, and relevance.
Ensuring teams are built on collaboration rather than siloed operations that inhibit communication and customer handoff.
The Importance of the customer experience
One of the biggest reasons why customer experience is important is because customers are now more informed and knowledgeable. This means that they can compare your company’s product or service with others, and will make a purchase based on which one has the most value. In order to keep customers coming back for a lifetime of repeat business, you need to provide them with an outstanding experience from start to finish, from their initial purchase to after-sale service.
In order to have a positive customer experience, it's necessary for your company to have a clear method of measuring what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong. The RevOps framework is designed specifically for this purpose. It provides a way for companies to measure performance, understand opportunities for improvement, and improve customer satisfaction over time.
The RevOps framework isn't just designed for high-powered businesses--small businesses can use this as well. It's not about how big your business is; it's about how well you connect marketing and sales objectives with customer needs.
What we originally thought about RevOps...
In the beginning, Imani Advantage focused HEAVILY on paid advertising with Facebook, Instagram, and Google Search. Truth is...we have always thought about the complete customer journey but paid acquisition alone is only a small segment of a customer journey (the same applies to the marketing strategy for businesses too).
As we have matured and are in a constant state of learning, we thought RevOps was simply a buzzword because our "normal" was not normal for many companies.
What we have witnessed was that many companies use the word synonymously with a Sales Operations Leader, a HubSpot expert, or a Salesforce System Admin. These tools can absolutely be used for a RevOps team, especially on an enterprise level but when you look into the core principles and the desired end goal of RevOps...even those positions could possibly work against a RevOps methodology if used improperly.
Now this may seem a little controversial to the more experienced professionals in the industry but we think RevOps (for the most part) is completely done wrong if the basis of forming and qualifying a RevOps team is centered around a tool first. Yes, a proper tech stack is a part of RevOps but it is not the mission for it. Looking at the career paths of getting into Revenue Operations looks very similar to Sales Ops or an IT team.
So why are we huge supporters of RevOps Now?
Short answer - it supports the customer AND the business at the same time by eliminating friction mutually.
You would think this would be a normal practice but working with many marketing agencies and businesses with various sizes, we have come to the conclusion that this is not the case. They have either focused heavily on generating revenue that people will have a huge churn rate or they focus so much on operations that revenue growth becomes stagnant (or decreases) with the red-tape of mundane practices.
Its Revenue + Operations, a common sense transformation to change your organization to care for your customers will do wonders for both overall. To take advantage of the benefits of RevOps, it's essential to understand how it works and how to put it into practice. However, once you do that, you'll see how the results can pay off.
RevOps In Action
It is our humble opinion that whenever there is a need to have a dedicated RevOps team, there is most likely a critical mass of complexity and friction within the organization.
With that being said...
RevOps is not a magic pill to fixing your problems over night.
It is NOT subordinate to Sales
It is NOT subordinate to Marketing
It is NOT subordinate of Customer Success, IT, Finance, or whatever else you are thinking of.
It is a collaborative process that has a deep knowledge of Marketing, Sales, and Success functions and should truly be a hybrid role. Building a cross-functional team plays a significant role in revenue operations.
We believe Hubspot has one of the most simple explanation for inbound marketing and ultimately RevOps using the Flywheel (One of the biggest inspiration for our logo):
Attract: drawing in the right people with valuable content and conversations that establish you as a trusted advisor with whom they want to engage.
Engage: presenting insights and solutions that align with their pain points and goals so they are more likely to buy from you.
Delight: providing help and support to empower your customers to find success with their purchase.
Providing great customer experiences can bring more momentum to your flywheel, but anything that would slow this process down is called friction - this can be poor communication amongst teams, improper handoffs, inefficient processes, etc.
Ultimately, the most essential role to RevOps is to reduce negative friction for the customer and your organization! Anything outside of that scope is extra. Your business has limited resources, you must use these resources efficiently (and responsibly) to maximize success towards your business objectives.