If any of these questions struck a chord with you, know you’re not alone.
Nowadays, one of the biggest challenges for a growing business is deciding which team to hire for first: RevOps or SalesOps?
While Sales Operations (SalesOps) teams have been around for a while, Revenue Operations (RevOps) as a function is relatively new. Some industry experts believe RevOps is a natural evolution of SalesOps. And in a way, they aren’t wrong.
At their core, RevOps and SalesOps serve the same purpose: to reduce friction and increase productivity within an organization.
Where these two teams differ is how and where they operate.
Let’s dive deeper into the roles and responsibilities of each team so we can understand how they function, what makes them different, and which one you might need first, if at all.
SalesOps: Roles and Responsibilities
Selling is first and foremost a client-facing job. Phone conversations, emails, in-person meetings at cafes or offices, online meetings on Zoom or Google Meet — today’s sales reps have to make themselves readily available to the client, no matter the time or communication channel.
Sounds demanding … and it is.
But selling can be quite taxing at the back end, too. Updating leads in the company CRM, configuring software, adopting new technologies, creating pipelines and processes — these are all labor-intensive tasks that tend to eat into a sales rep’s valuable selling time.
Enter SalesOps.
The SalesOps Framework
The single biggest goal of a SalesOps team is to reduce the time sales reps spend on non-selling tasks like updating leads and configuring software, so the reps can instead spend more time doing what they do best: selling.
Of course, SalesOps does a lot more than support reps on the back end. They are also responsible for implementing new systems, analyzing sales data, reducing friction wherever possible, formulating strategies and campaigns, and making key decisions that directly affect the sales cycle.
What does SalesOps do?
Some common responsibilities of SalesOps teams include:
- ▪ High-level planning and goal setting
- ▪ Streamlining sales processes
- ▪ Streamlining sales processes
- ▪ Optimizing sales funnels
- ▪ Sales forecasting
- ▪ Implementing and customizing CRMs
- ▪ Integrating apps and tools
- ▪ Automating tasks
- ▪ Lead Management
- ▪ Reviewing comp and commisiion plans
- ▪ Identifying KPIs and sales metrics
- ▪ Hiring and onboarding new talent
- ▪ Overseeing contracts and SLAs
- ▪ Sales training
- ▪ Product training
Note: SalesOps and sales enablement teams are sometimes treated as one. But the two are not the same. The overarching goal for each team might be the same: increasing sales effectiveness and generating more revenue. But the way they function is quite different. Sales enablement teams are more concerned with providing on-ground support to reps, usually when the customer is in the earlier stages of the sales funnel. SalesOps, however, focuses on more advanced support functions (such as high-level planning and sales forecasting), and intervenes when the customer is at the end of the sales funnel by offering negotiation and legal support.
RevOps: Roles and Responsibilities
The way companies regard their revenue process is changing dramatically. This is, in part, due to changes in purchasing habits of the modern consumer.
With today’s customer conducting copious amounts of research before they even connect with a sales rep, and with subscription-based models now more prevalent than ever before, revenue is no longer about selling only. For companies to enjoy sustained, long-term growth, it is crucial that all their revenue-generating teams — sales, marketing, and customer success — operate in perfect sync, rather than as individual units, which was the norm until recently.
Revenue Operations (RevOps) is the direct result of this need.
The RevOps Framework
The main aim of RevOps is to maximize an organization’s revenue potential by streamlining and aligning the efforts of sales, marketing, customer success, and account management — both at the front and back end. Within all revenue-generating teams of a company, RevOps oversees four major aspects:
- ▪ System
- ▪ Software
- ▪ Processes
- ▪ Data
What does RevOps do?
Some common responsibilities of RevOps teams include:
- ▪ Reviewing company policies and business processes
- ▪ Facilitating easier communication between sales, marketing, and customer success teams
- ▪ Generating short- and long-term reports using a variety of data sets
- ▪ Obtaining, implementing, and maintaining software across all revenue-generating functions
- ▪ Providing on-going training to all employees regarding the use of new systems or following new processes
- ▪ Delivering visibility across the entire revenue team
- ▪ Driving revenue predictability Improving efficiency across the revenue process
RevOps vs SalesOps: Similar destinations. Different routes.
The primary difference between RevOps and SalesOps is that while the latter supports the B2B sales process, the former is responsible for operations across all revenue-generating teams.
You can think of SalesOps as the right arm of a Sales VP, and also as the eyes and ears of upper management. Without a SalesOps team, sales initiatives are introduced haphazardly, valuable campaign data is neither tracked nor harnessed, and consistent actionable reporting remains a pipe dream.
In the same vein, you can think of RevOps as the collective right arm of your three VPs — sales, marketing, and customer success — put together. RevOps does everything SalesOps does, but on a larger scale, since one of the main goals of RevOps is to keep not just individuals, but entire departments, aligned and in-sync.
If SalesOps is about reducing friction within sales teams so your reps can spend more time selling, then RevOps is about enabling the entire revenue-generating arm of your business to, well, generate more revenue.
Conclusion
Now that we’ve seen what makes the two teams different, some of you might be thinking RevOps is clearly the superior choice since they handle more complex, high-level tasks.
But frankly, that could not be further from the truth.
Both these teams are critical to your company’s success. The key differentiator is where you currently stand, and what your needs are at this very moment.
Are you a fledgling startup who has recently achieved product-market fit and completed your first round of funding? Is your company touted as the next market disruptor, armed with a new, game-changing product that could create waves? If so, then SalesOps might be the right choice for you since sales will likely be your biggest focus right now.
On the other hand, if you are a more established player in your field and are now looking to take your business to the next level, or if your goal is to drive accountability and transparency at scale, you might need a team of RevOps specialists who will help you break existing silos between departments, and build a more cohesive business unit that can maximize productivity on an organizational level.
At the end of the day, RevOps and SalesOps are both formidable weapons.
Which one you choose will depend upon which battle you’re fighting.
