Revenue Cadences: How to Run Revenue with Rigor and Capture More Deals

Every revenue organization needs a playbook. 

For your favorite sports team, the playbook is a sophisticated set of strategies and tactics that help the team consistently perform. For your revenue team, the playbook is a set of Revenue Cadences that help you capture more deals and grow your bottom line. 

Without a strong playbook, your revenue efforts will be glitchy, inefficient, and frustrating. Your process will be filled with gaps that lead to missed deals. 

We call this Revenue Leak. And it drains 26% of annual revenue from the average team, according to Clari’s 2024 Revenue Leak Report. 

How do you run revenue with rigor?

Scott Peyser (SVP RevOps, Clari) sat down with Laura Fu (Head of Revenue Operations and Strategy, DevRev) for a RevOps workshop webinar sharing insights that power high-producing teams. Their tips can help you tighten your revenue process, creating rigor every day, week, and month of the quarter. 

Let’s look at six best practices.

1. Install consistent and operationalized cadences

Every company runs cadences. 

But are they consistent and operationalized? Do they empower revenue-facing team members or hold them back?

For RevOps professionals, answering these questions requires cross-referencing existing cadences and bottom-line performance. It requires digging into the root causes of slowdowns within the revenue process. 

”Cadences are about aligning people to specific goals and bringing focus to the entire organization,” Laura Fu explains in the workshop.

Lock in these features:

• Documentation. Document your Revenue Cadences and make them easy to find. Your team doesn’t have to rely on memory or build their own cadences from scratch.
• Awareness. Every revenue team member, from sales rep to executive, is aware of the documented Revenue Cadences and understands their purpose and importance. This alignment helps drive adoption and accountability.
• Strategy. Your Revenue Cadences are designed to support the overall business strategy and revenue objectives. They are not just operational rituals, but strategic tools that help the organization achieve its goals.
• Responsiveness. Revenue Cadences are regularly reviewed and adapted to address changing market conditions, new business needs, and evolving challenges. This flexibility ensures your cadences remain relevant and impactful.

To get started, grab a copy of our Revenue Cadence Playbook, which includes a step-by-step guide to identifying - and winning - major revenue moments.

2. Reduce meeting fatigue with pre-reads

Let’s face it: Most revenue meetings are a slog. 

They’re heavy on details and light on insights. In many cases, they become an interrogation that’s no fun for anyone. 

How can you cut down on meeting fatigue? With pre-reads. 

Providing pre-read materials and data ahead of time pulls everyone onto the same page. It focuses your meetings on discussions, insights, and problem-solving, not just reporting. And it makes your cadences bi-directional, providing value to both the rep and the manager. 

Here are high-impact steps to make your whole revenue team’s meetings more effective:

1. Establish a pre-read template any revenue-facing team member can use. 
2. Send out pre-read materials at least 24 hours before the meeting.
3. Include key data points and context for discussion topics.

3. Power your cadences with a single source of truth

As Laura Fu shared in the live workshop, a successful revenue cadence is fundamentally about “Knowing what to do, when.”

But keeping your team on the same page is harder than it sounds. You’ve got:

• Conflicting pipeline data
• Inconsistent customer information
• Different revenue projections

Within organizations, these breakdowns in communication and consistency cause Revenue Leak. Teams drop customer handoffs - as many as 54% of teams lack functional handoffs between marketing and sales, Clari’s research found. Other breakdowns? Teams aim for individual revenue targets instead of shared ones, and fail to spot pipeline issues. The results are costly and continuous. 

That’s why high-powered teams establish a single source of truth to keep everyone working from the same set of facts. This maintains accuracy across revenue operations and keeps team members aligned. 

Features of a single source of truth include:

• Centralized access. Data and information are stored in one central location, accessible to every revenue-facing team member. This eliminates the need to search through multiple systems or sources, providing the team with easy access to data.
• Real-time updates. The data in your single source of truth is continuously updated in real-time. This ensures teams are working with the most current information, reducing the risk you’re making decisions based on outdated data.
• Standardized metrics. The single source of truth provides standardized definitions and metrics for key revenue metrics and points. This prevents misunderstandings and aligns departments in how they measure and interpret data.
• Integrated systems. The platform is integrated with essential systems and tools, such as your CRM, marketing automation, and finance software. This integration locks in seamless data flow and reduces the manual effort required to gather and organize information.
• User-friendly interface. The platform is intuitive and easy to navigate, allowing  your team to quickly find information without extensive training. This feature boosts efficiency and promotes consistent use across your organization.

The ideal single source of truth? A technology solution like a revenue operations platform that provides revenue data in real time. 

4. Stop Revenue Leak with targeted cadences

Which cadences should you prioritize?

The ones that directly target Revenue Leaks. Revenue Leaks drain hard-earned dollars from your organization and, along with it, sap your team of confidence and morale. 

So go after them. 

Design laser-focused cadences to address your biggest source of Revenue Leak, such as deal reviews or pipeline management. Separate data tracking from general metrics to maintain attention and drive targeted actions.

As Scott Peyser says in the workshop, it’s critical you make sure to separate revenue critical moments into a structured and regulated process.

Here’s how to leverage this process:

1. Identify your high-impact sources of Revenue Leak.  
2. Create specialized cadences for each area, focusing on root cause analysis.
3. Use data to help your team understand the “why” behind your new cadence.

Need help identifying your Revenue Leaks? Take Clari’s Revenue Leak Assessment. 

5. Respond to changing market and business needs

Frankly, the market doesn’t care about your cadences.

It’s going to change. Evolve. Throw your team new and unique challenges. That’s why set-it-and-forget-it Revenue Cadences miss the mark. 

Instead, stay adaptable.

Monitor the effectiveness of your cadences on an ongoing basis – at a minimum every quarter – and be ready to adjust your playbook as your business and the market grows. Balancing consistency with responsiveness keeps your cadences relevant and high-impact.

Take these steps:

• Schedule routine reviews of your cadence structure.
• Gather feedback from your team to identify areas for improvement.
• Adjust the frequency or focus of cadences to reflect evolving priorities.

6. Recruit every revenue-facing team member

Revenue Cadences only work if your team is bought in. 

Skip the recruitment step and you’ll have a high-powered revenue cadence playbook that sits on the sidelines. Revenue-facing teams will continue to operate as they alway have – and get the same results they’ve always gotten.

So how do you recruit effectively? Involve everyone.

Engage all revenue-facing team members, from sales to customer success, to lock in coverage and insights. Bring sales leaders on board to drive these cadences. Also loop in reps for front-line feedback. And don’t forget your marketing and customer success teams.

Leverage this approach:

• Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of every team member in cadences.
• Encourage active participation and input from all attendees.
• Explain the “why” behind new cadences.

Watch RevOps Workshop: How to Build a Winning Revenue Cadence

These are six of the key lessons Laura Fu and Scott Peyser discussed for RevOps leaders in their workshop on developing a cadence to win more revenue. Watch the workshop on demand for more of their advice.