Your Best RevOps Platform: Your CRM!

The global revenue operations (RevOps) platform market size in 2023 is over $3.5 billion. By the end of 2033, that same market is expected to exceed $18B, according to a recent study by Future Market Insights. The current market represents only about 5% of the customer relationship management (CRM) market.

While this is interesting information, I find it rather tragic that only 5% of the CRM market is represented as the RevOps platform market. Most CRMs can (and should) be configured to support revenue operations without any additional or dedicated software. In fact, the RevOps platform market should equal the entire CRM market!

What is RevOps?

Let’s step back and understand exactly what is revenue operations? It is the alignment of all revenue-generating teams within an organization. These include sales, marketing, and customer success (or post-sales relationships.) The RevOps team works to maximize revenue potential by streamlining and coordinating front- and back-end operations. This will include things like shared processes, goals/targets, systems, and data.

Even today, most businesses have relatively independent sales and marketing teams. Sometimes, they barely talk, much less share goals and a vision for the organization’s success. A Harvard Business Review article from 2021 indicated that sales and marketing misalignment costs businesses over $1 trillion per year! When you add in misaligned customer success teams, even more money is left on the table!

In order to get these teams working well together, the leadership team must make an intentional effort. Members of each of the go-to-market teams must have an appreciation for what the other functions do and how they can and should work in sync. Each department plays a unique role in the buyers’ journey. So, making that journey as seamless as possible, with no perceptible hand-offs or missteps is an admirable goal and will most certainly drive growth.

Driving alignment with common processes and platforms

One of the important ways to drive alignment is to discuss processes from the customer’s perspective. Then, map out those processes with clear functional roles and responsibilities as well as triggers for hand-offs. Another key tool for driving RevOps is your shared data platform – your CRM!

Marketing, sales, and customer success need to use the same platform and share the same data in order to benefit fully. Each may spend more time in a different view or area of the CRM. However, the data exchange between functions will help paint a wholistic view of customers and their journeys. When sales can see that marketing programs are driving leads, and marketing can see that sales is following up and closing deals based on a specific marketing investment, both functions have more skin in the game and can more fully appreciate how important both roles are in working toward a common growth goal. Likewise, customer success can build on the journey by using the data available and continuing to meet specific needs outlined in the customer record.

Side note: Simply using data isn’t enough. Live conversations about specific accounts always give more flavor and better insights than can be captured in a database alone. Good account management takes a village and cannot be left only to the account manager. While they are typically very good at maintaining relationships, they need to know how their clients continue to engage with content and events as well as product-specific information, like new product and service launches.

All CRMs should be RevOps-focused

Back to my initial premise, all CRM databases should be core to a RevOps strategy. If yours isn’t, then you are suboptimizing your investment. Perhaps you are still early in your CRM journey, and you simply haven’t gotten there yet. Not to worry, as long as commercial alignment is your long-term goal.

If you already have a CRM that is well established, but you haven’t stepped back to analyze its role in your RevOps strategy, then now is a great time for that. The team at TopLine Results works with clients all day every day in an effort to help them drive growth using a number of CRMs: Microsoft Dynamics 365, Zoho, Act! and HubSpot. We would be happy to assist in your CRM assessment and your journey toward a RevOps focus. Please reach out to info@toplineresults.com or 800-880-1960 for more information.

And if you don’t feel like you know enough about RevOps to take action right away, you might want to consider my book: Ignite Topline Growth: How RevOps and Go-To-Market Alignment Spark Success. It is an easy read and will provide you with concrete steps to embracing revenue operations for your team.