There are critical moments throughout your quarter that define how you generate and accelerate revenue. These "moments that matter" are a set of recurring meetings and group forums that comprise the backbone of your revenue process. These moments — such as your manager and rep one-on-one sales meetings, forecast calls, sales pipeline reviews, renewal calls, and others — should be managed and optimized for efficiency.
But, too often, these moments are spent debating the numbers, chasing down deal facts, or interrogating reps instead of strategically discussing a close plan.
High-performing revenue teams are modernizing their revenue processes by replacing their hodgepodge of spreadsheets, reports, and tedious manual efforts with a revenue operations solution. As a result, they're able to focus on the opportunities that matter most, execute on their pipeline more efficiently, and set their reps up for success.
In parts 1 and 2 of our RevOps buyer's guide series, we specified the 4 critical components that every revenue operations solution should have:
- Trustworthy data and automation;
- Deeper revenue insights;
- Consistent execution;
- Predictable revenue.
We started with trustworthy deal data that is transformational for your CRM data quality, and dove into the importance of deeper, actionable revenue insights to allow for more prescriptive selling.
In part 3 of our RevOps buying guide blog series, we will walk you through why consistent execution matters — and how to find a revenue operations solution to get you there.
What Is a Revenue Operations Solution?
Let's first start with a refresher on a revenue operations solution. Revenue operations solutions use AI to analyze historical deal trends and patterns, so you know which deals are at risk, where to focus, and ultimately where you will land for this quarter and next. You no longer need to wait around for someone else to build a report — it's all right there in one place.
Adding an AI-based revenue operations solution to your CRM is the way modern sales teams improve their data hygiene, save time, and replace the hodgepodge of untrustworthy spreadsheets and stale reports. With one unified system, revenue operations teams can align around the same numbers and predict revenue more effectively.
Why Is Consistent Execution Important in a RevOps Solution?
At each one-on-one sales meeting, QBR, pipeline review session, or forecast call, there are vital questions you need to be able to answer quickly to drive your selling process and close more deals faster. When executed correctly, with visibility and accountability across sales, marketing, and customer success, these moments can lead to improved and predictable top-line results quarter after quarter.
With consistency in your revenue cadence you spend less time reporting the news and more time executing the current quarter and building pipeline for future quarters. Executives can review the current quarter’s revenue trajectory, compare it with targets, and readjust strategy and focus as necessary so that there are no surprises. Managers can coach reps, accelerate ramp time, and drive better adoption of the sales process. Sales, marketing, and customer success can have a shared view of the business so they can make data-driven decisions in a transparent and repeatable way.
How Can You Evaluate a RevOps Solution for Consistent Execution?
So what exactly should you be looking for in a revenue operations solution?
- Look for purpose-built workflows and user experiences that can streamline execution across the revenue process. Ask for day-in-a-life demos to understand each use case for reps, managers, ops, sales executives, customer success, and marketing.
- Check for intuitive dashboards, alerts, and mobile experiences that will drive higher adoption across the team.
Key Features That Drive Consistent Execution
We've compiled a list of critical capabilities every revenue operations solution should include:
- Customizable and flexible dashboards and reporting: the ability to create dashboards (for QBRs, one-on-one sales meetings, etc.) and share them with specific users or user groups so your entire go-to-market team has visibility into the business and can work together to close deals faster.
- Mobile and web platform support: the ability to support use cases, such as deal update and forecast submission, in web and mobile platforms so revenue teams can update from anywhere at any time.
- Mobile opportunity hygiene alerts: the ability to remind reps to update important deals so teams are consistently updating their deals as they happen.
- Current and next quarter overview: the ability to view the current and next quarters in relation to targets (by business segment/team/rep), so teams can plan ahead.
- Issue top deal and overdue alerts: the ability to generate alerts for top deals at risk, stale deals, and deals that can be pulled in so reps know where to focus their time.
- Manage one-on-one calls: the ability for managers to inspect pipeline across reps while collaborating on the same data.
- Manage real-time forecast calls: the ability for teams to review forecasts, drill down into deals, and update forecasts in real-time.
- Manage pipeline review calls: the ability to review pipeline and drill down into deals in real-time.
- Manage QBRs: the ability to review past quarter performance, inspect current quarter deals, and evaluate next quarter pipeline.
Modernizing your revenue process shouldn't be hard. With a revenue operations solution, you can drastically transform the way you drive revenue growth and retention for your business.
To maximize the benefits of your RevOps solution and achieve even more predictable revenue, implement a revenue operations framework.
To uncover more must-have capabilities to select the right AI-based RevOps solution for your business, download our ebook "How to Choose a Revenue Operations Solution for your CRM" and supercharge your revenue process today.