RevOps Won’t Align Your Team

If you have an alignment problem, RevOps isn’t going to fix it.

This is what Camela Thompson, VP of Marketing at CaliberMind, shared in her Hot Takes Live talk.

And after spending 15 years working in RevOps, she would know better than anyone.

In those fifteen years, she often found herself frustrated with a number of issues that she couldn’t overcome alone in her role. 

This included things like being asked to change the behavior of others without having the positional authority to do so or reporting to people who would always prioritize another investment or headcount over the data she was bringing to the table.

In some cases, people would even use her to point the finger when a bad quarter happened instead of using the data to optimize for improvement. There was no chance of an executive career path without moving into a functional group, leaving her hands tied. 

Most organizations structure their revenue operations team in the following ways:

• Limit the positional authority of the department as a whole, treating it as a supportive role instead of an authoritative one
• Appoint a CRO who will put resources where they are most comfortable diagnosing and fixing issues, instead of putting someone who is neutral in the role who won’t just “break a tie” for the department they’re most familiar with (this is particularly common in B2B brands)
• Appoint a CRO who naturally puts operational efficiency on the back burner when it comes to budget 

It’s perhaps not surprising, therefore, that things haven’t really been moving in a better direction since the introduction of RevOps. 

Only one in two companies say sales and marketing have a formal definition of a qualified lead, causing a major alignment issue. One-third of B2B sales and marketing teams don’t have a standing meeting, and research shows that 90% of sales and marketing professionals believe that their strategy, processes, culture, and content are not aligned.

These are significant issues that keep the departments disjointed.

It’s not uncommon for RevOps to make crucial missteps of either treating RevOps like Sales Ops 2.0 or silo by department instead of specialty. Both of these will keep marketing and sales from becoming aligned at any point, exacerbating issues instead of resolving them.

In Thompson’s opinion, structuring people by specialty is the way to go. They need to stay in close coordination, so having cross-departmental specialists with the ability to work together better is essential.

In practice, this means the following:

• Always have a strong operational leader at the helm of RevOps, and not someone who will just pick the side they’re most familiar with
• Let the RevOps leader plan the budget and headcount for their team, and hold them responsible for proving their impact
• Start planting the seed that business leaders and investors should advocate for a different C-Suite structure

Want more? Join 48 of the top SaaS leaders on February 16th, 2023, as they dish out hot takes and surprising insights on product-led growth, RevOps, marketing, and sales. Save your seat now!