RevOps Framework Deep Dive: Leadership Alignment

Recently, we published the Hyperscayle RevOps Framework. Hyperscayle defines revenue operations as the design and execution of Go-To-Market (GTM) processes and systems across the lead-to-cash lifecycle.

To us, this includes marketing operations, sales operations, customer success operations, channel operations, and finance operations. Ours is a holistic view, not thinking in terms of silos bolted together, but rather as steps of a unified process. We created the Hyperscayle RevOps framework to further structure our approach.

The categories of our framework include leadership alignment, process definition, team structure, systems & tools, and data foundation. These five categories cover all facets of a holistic RevOps program, and Hyperscayle uses this framework to organize our efforts and prioritize the right things for our clients.

Each of these categories is a weighty topic, so this article is a deep dive into RevOps Leadership Alignment.

Scrap Your Top-Down GTM Operating Plans

As mentioned in our original article on the RevOps Framework, leadership alignment ensures your RevOps team is a force multiplier for your organization by making sure that every GTM function (including marketing, sales, customer success, channel, and finance) has a well-formulated operating plan that is followed. This is important because it brings every leader together on the same page and ensures that they understand the issues stopping the organization from moving forward to either hitting – or overachieving – revenue goals.

While many organizations have GTM operating plans, a common mistake is making this plan with a top-down approach. Most of the time, the plan starts at either the CEO or CFO level, which means it is based solely on the revenue number the team needs to grow or hit. The issue is that often the plan stops there and it is given to other leaders who must independently figure out a way to come to that number.

The problem with a top-down approach is that it doesn’t allow leaders across GTM functions the ability to plan or react to see if they can even hit the number. Lacking this alignment between leaders and teams creates a huge challenge for scaling organizations. VP and Director level leaders often feel frustrated when the goals being pushed from the top down are divorced from the reality “in the trenches.”

Examples include setting a goal for the number of marketing leads without considering conversion percentages and the lag time between marketing activity and results. Similarly, telling a sales leader to hit a specific target without sufficient quota coverage is just setting them up for failure. If this situation persists, the GTM plan is going to be merely aspirational, and not actually useful for making decisions that improve the business.

Leverage the RevOps Function to Build Plans and Align Teams

To avoid these issues, organizations must move GTM operational planning out of a top-down approach and into each of the GTM functions (marketing, sales, customer success, channel and finance). This is easier said than done, since most of the time, these functions are not set up for planning or cross-function communication. Instead, marketing and sales teams are focused on their core role - making happy customers.

The RevOps function comes into play here. The RevOps team can start building plans and then align those plans across each function to ensure support is in the right place. For example, if the overall goal is to double the revenue number, the RevOps team can see that this might require doubling the number of sales reps, and also doubling the number of leads to support those reps.

The RevOps team can put a detailed, cross-functional operating plan in place that includes timing, and enable the communication between sales and marketing teams to execute. Without this alignment, execution is at risk and it’s likely that the revenue goal will be missed by a significant percentage.

Even if a goal (like doubling revenue) comes from a top-down approach, it needs to be supported from the bottom up with a revenue production plan. A revenue production plan details what production is needed - such as the number of leads or opportunities required - to get to the revenue goal.

Creating a revenue production plan also requires a centralized RevOps group to both build the plan and to work with each of the GTM functions to develop their own plan at the function level (marketing, sales, customer support, etc.) to drive inputs into the production plan.

Align Leaders Around Risk and Timelines

With plans built, the next challenge is rationalizing the plan across the GTM groups. This is where leadership alignment comes in. There are always broken connections between groups. The important role of the RevOps teams at this stage is to get group leaders to agree, understand risks, and identify the biggest dependencies within the plan.

For example, to hit a number in the plan, the sales function may need to identify new sales reps, recruit them, and train them to be productive on a specific timeline – for example before the busy season. This requires a certain number of recruiters and new hires or it becomes a risk factor.

As another example, the marketing team may have a specific number of leads required by a specific month in order to leave ample time for sales teams to follow up and close deals within the required time frame.

Fix Reporting with an Agreed Source of Truth

Reporting is one of the first things people think of when it comes to operations, and it’s often the first area for improvement when we engage with our clients. Organizations almost always have a huge number of reports, but no single source of truth for key metrics and data.

Leaders across all of the GTM functions regularly waste countless hours sifting through multiple dashboards to find the data they need to make (even simple) business decisions. They waste even more time arguing about data accuracy when separate dashboards conflict with one another.

Because of this, the first crucial part of aligning RevOps leadership is making sure there is a single set of dashboards that all leaders can agree is a source of truth. We call this a “runbook.” Building the runbook should be done in lockstep with the revenue production plan, to make sure all key metrics are being measured and displayed to leadership.

The Bottom Line on RevOps Leadership Alignment

It’s tricky to build and execute a GTM plan that actually helps an organization achieve business goals related to revenue growth. Not only must the plan be well designed, and bottom-up as well as top-down, it must be supported with reporting that is both comprehensive and succinct.

Leadership alignment is critical through the planning and execution process, and an effective RevOps team can help drive alignment, direct changes, and manage the plan across functional teams. RevOps can provide insight into how changes to the plan, and they can communicate the impacts when functional teams miss or exceed their numbers as part of the plan.