MarketStar Blog | Articles (19)

There’s no questioning the critical role that content has to play in sales enablement. This is clearly illustrated by the fact that 58% of sales pipelines grind to a halt as a result of sales representatives’ inability to add value — something they’d be able to do with the right content at their disposal.1  

There’s also the small matter of 95% of buyers ultimately selecting a solution or service provider who delivered content that was aligned with each stage of the buying process.2 The numbers don’t end there, but the case is made: content is critical in sales enablement. 

Naturally, then, the next question you’d have is about how to get sales enablement content right. It’s a nuanced topic that doesn’t have a simple answer, but there are a few pointers that can set you on the right path to creating high-value sales enablement content.  

Let’s get right to it. 

In response to the demands of physical distancing and work from home that came with the onset of the current pandemic, many sales organizations were quick in adapting to a virtual sales model that they hoped would only be a holding pattern until the situation “returns to normal.” However, what we are looking at is not a temporary disruption to the sales process and methodologies, but a thoroughgoing restructuring. While many of the digital shifts were already in play before the pandemic, the new normal requires companies to adopt them within much shorter timeframes. Sales enablement has a vital role in all of these changes as it provides a robust framework to support remote sales training and coaching, virtual selling, and the implementation of a virtual sales model that is appropriate for the emerging digital world. 

The role of contact centers has evolved over the years, with the emphasis now on improving customer experiences and generating revenue for companies. It's not just about the delivery of customer service or cutting costs anymore. Rather, it's about building relationships with your customers and maintaining these relationships effectively.

Sales training is a multi-billion dollar industry. The global workplace training industry reached an estimated market size of 370.3 billion U.S. dollars in 2019.1 Organizations spent an average of $2,326 per salesperson on sales training annually.2 But how successful have these training programs been?  Seemingly, not very successful.  Consider this. A 2018 study3 revealed that just over half (53%) of all sales organizations hit their target numbers, and this figure has been on a decline over the past five years. 

Key Takeaways

• Market conditions have grown infinitely more challenging for companies, making a coordinated go-to-market structure an absolute imperative. This makes revenue operations an indispensable tool for companies.

• Roadmapping is a key ingredient of RevOps success, not only helping teams to be more aligned but also driving accountability so people work on what has the highest impact on revenue.

• It is important to remember that a well-planned RevOps roadmap is not a task list. It’s a process that involves carefully evaluating the gaps in not just the customer journey but also the mistakes in your own processes.

• As daunting as it can seem as you get started, a strategic framework will help you in planning your initiative-keeping revenue as the overarching theme.

When you expect your product manager to map out the vision and direction of your product offering, why shouldn’t your go-to-market operations deserve the same due diligence? 

Many B2B companies rely on intuition to decide what they should be doing. But such an approach often fails to answer the revenue-based “why” in them. 

This is where a strategic roadmap (also referred to as RevOps framework) for your revenue operations becomes crucial.

When consistent revenue growth continues to be a challenge for 78% of B2B companies, a well-executed revenue operation framework can deliver a centralized plan to predict revenue based on data. 

Without a roadmap in place, you rely on a shotgun approach to your revenue. Just like a product roadmap, a RevOps roadmap becomes a source of truth for your revenue team. For the rest of your organization, it offers a glimpse into the work that is being done and why. 

3 Things to Consider While Building Your RevOps Roadmap

According to a report by SiriusDecisions, B2B organizations that have implemented aligned revenue operations are better positioned to thrive in the next three to five years.

Your RevOps strategy roadmap will be a one-stop source that shows everyone the top-level game plan and direction while describing the high-level timelines. 

Make a note of the following factors as you get down to building your RevOps framework. 

1. Maintain Simplicity

Your RevOps framework will act as a visual tool. When using Excel, PowerPoint, or online tools such as Smartsheet, keep to one tab/slide for each team (Marketing, Sales, Customer Success). 

2. Collaborate:

A RevOps roadmap is incomplete without stakeholders from various teams and not just executives from sales, marketing, and customer success. You will include people from HR, finance, and legal teams too. While your framework defines multiple workstreams and ownerships, remember to make collaboration a basis for everyone to achieve the revenue goals. 

3. Goal-specific: 

 While focusing on every minute detail is not required, your RevOps strategy framework should encompass all the critical activities. These are deliverables that have a direct impact on your revenue targets. 

Creating a RevOps Roadmap: 5 Key Points to Consider

RevOps is a centralizing function, aimed to increase collaboration between different departments. In order to achieve end-to-end alignment of the revenue engine, your RevOps roadmap should start and end with a growth mindset, with focused attention to closing the gaps in your buyers’ journey. 

A strategic roadmap for RevOps relies heavily on the unique situation of your organization. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, some general guidelines can help you to build a comprehensive, interconnected, visible, and repeatable process across go-to-market functions. 

1. Build Your Benchmark

Begin by creating your RevOps productivity benchmark. 

Many enterprises hesitate to create benchmarks, worried they will choose something that will be regretted later. 

To avoid such a situation, avoid metrics that don’t always translate to success, such as a rep’s volume of calls or emails. 

Data plays a strong role here. Look into what is and is not progressing through your funnel. But one month of data won’t cut it.  Measure everything for 90 days (at least) before you create benchmarks and KPIs. Be prepared to review this and revise it sometimes. 

2. Understand Your Business Capabilities 

A well-planned strategy roadmap for RevOps dives deep into business resources and needs. 

Let’s take an organization with less than 100 people. Most likely, their revenue operations will consist of a small team, possibly a single person handling different areas. 

For large organizations, the picture is different where RevOps roles might already exist in sales, marketing, and client success. 

While starting with a RevOps lead can have advantages, you need to have a far-out vision of where your business will stand in a year, two years, or five years from now. Taking the route of a larger organization can ensure that you have a solid system in place. 

3. Prioritize

One of the key differences between a RevOps strategy roadmap and a task list is that the work planned for RevOps is carefully aligned with its predicted impact on the business. Your revenue team, then, focuses on high-impact work that leads to the organization reaching its revenue goals. 

You can prioritize which work your team takes up by looking at the gaps that a specific activity will solve. In the absence of these gaps, will your revenue increase? Will you see more qualified leads? Will it lead to more minor leakages at handoff points?

4. Assemble Your Team

Driving full-funnel accountability is incomplete without a team of RevOps rockstars! 

The aim of your RevOps roadmap is to unify people, process, and platforms. Consequently, there are several roles that could be right for your business. 

Take operations management, for instance. This team will understand the resources available and distribute them accordingly while aligning them with the overall vision and revenue goals. Similarly, you might require a more robust data and analytics team who would collect data and help you make informed decisions.

5. Align Your Team

Audits are a great way to start here.

Note down the existing processes across your internal teams so you have a better grasp of the inconsistencies that are causing problems for team members. 

Data analysis plays a pivotal role. It can help you develop a baseline for the areas of improvement and whether a technological upgrade can help your team realize its full potential. 

As go-to-market alignment can only be reached if your teams are aligned, your revenue operations framework, as well as progress, should be communicated regularly with your RevOps team. 

Why RevOps Roadmaps Fail at Times

A crucial trait of a well-planned revenue operations strategy is its proclivity to ask “why?”. And this starts with gap analysis. 

In its absence, you will fail to prioritize work based on the level of impact. So, it is not that the work is not getting done. Instead, there is no consistent communication across the organization about the work that will unify GTMs. 

Your revenue operations framework will be ineffective if: 

• More than one roadmap is being used and your team is not sure which one to refer to

• There is no consistent meeting cadence, leading to the roadmap becoming static

• There is a lack of prioritization leading to the RevOps roadmap becoming a task list 

• No ownerships are being given to initiatives

Roadmapping for Continued Success

From a buzzword a few years back, RevOps has become an organizational imperative.

Done well, RevOps helps businesses fix revenue pipeline through significant efficiency gains, organizational efficacy, customer centricity, cost savings, and, finally, business growth.

Reaping such benefits starts with a well-executed RevOps framework that works in tandem with the company vision. 

As you make roadmapping a consistent process, you will create opportunities for a new era of superior customer experience, increased revenue, and sustained growth. 

Key Insights

No matter which industry you’re in, the issue of customer experience is likely your focus area for 2022 and beyond. 

Customer experience was rising to the surface, even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But the disruptions and uncertainties brought on by multiple lockdowns has made one thing very clear: people want to be heard. 

This concept forms the core of customer experience. 

People want to be seen and appreciated by the companies they buy from. They want these companies to alleviate their pain points and offer solutions that are tailor-made for their needs. 

Solving customer pain points becomes a critical factor of success in this context. 

The customer engagement landscape has transformed significantly over the past decade. Customers no longer rely solely on emails or call centers for support; instead, they tweet, send in-app messages, or engage via chatbots, expecting quick and seamless responses. They also demand support on their preferred channels, rather than being restricted to company-designated ones. 

An omnichannel strategy enables businesses to provide a unified, seamless customer experience across all communication channels. According to Aberdeen Research, companies with well-defined omnichannel programs experience a 91% higher year-over-year increase in customer retention¹. However, one of our earlier studies found that 75% of businesses have yet to implement omnichannel support in their contact centers². 

Here are five key steps to successfully implementing an omnichannel support program. 

Introduction 

As we slowly come to terms with the reality of living in a COVID-19 world, there is growing recognition that the pandemic will for better or for worse permanently change the way we live and conduct business. For sales organizations that adapted to the demands of physical distancing and work-from-home by merely executing existing processes through remote conferencing tools, there is a need to recognize that remote work is the new normal within which they must transform themselves to function effectively in a totally new paradigm. Not only do sales operations have to be restructured, but so do other processes such as onboarding, training, and coaching of sales teams.  

The traditional on-premises software distribution model is fast becoming a thing of the past. While it’s still relevant in some contexts, it has been largely upstaged by the advent of SaaS. The rise of the subscription economy, driven by the numerous benefits of adopting SaaS, including lower costs and greater flexibility regarding upgrades, means that SaaS is here to stay; it has firmly established itself as the business model of the foreseeable future.

In a survey conducted by Demandbase, an Account-Based Marketing (ABM) company, as many as 80% of marketing executives said they believed that AI would revolutionize the marketing industry by 2020¹. AI applications are already transforming various aspects of marketing. Harnessing AI to power your ABM efforts can produce amazing results. The question is, how do you leverage AI in ABM? Here are four ways AI can help.