Author: Mariangel Babbel

So you think you’ve exhausted your market?

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With the economy lagging and experts forecasting possible recessions, forward-thinking companies are looking to stimulate new revenue in new markets. In a vacuum, not a bad strategy. But many companies doing so are leaving money on the table in their current markets.

If you think you’ve exhausted your market… you’re probably wrong.

In fact, a recent Gartner report recommends that tech CEOs renew their sales and marketing efforts in two areas:

  • Existing markets (where their products are proven)
  • Existing customer base (as a chance for expansion with new buying efforts)

The report does not mince words: “Tech CEOs must avoid the temptation to go after new markets and verticals (especially when there is not a clear, well-researched and validated opportunity for growth) if doing so puts success in existing markets at risk.”

Venturing too heavily into new markets is a lot like abandoning your fortress in battle: when companies lose focus on their core market, their competitors swoop in. As a result, companies forfeit the Fortress of Market Share, including both new accounts and expansion opportunities with existing ones.

This is of course not to warn ambitious orgs away from exploring new markets altogether. There are strategic reasons to leave the fortress. Yet breaking into new markets and booking revenue requires time—a resource that many companies don’t have enough of. 

Fully evaluating your current market for growth opportunities (especially when the economy is suppressed) is a worthy—and worthwhile—endeavor. Then, when looking at new markets at the right time, employing a smart, surgical strategy will maximize the return on your efforts.

 

Re-evaluate your market stronghold

Many times, companies that believe they’ve exhausted their market have actually exhausted their ICP. 

Too often, a traditional ICP fits in four or five bullets on a PowerPoint slide. These are usually firmographic indicators of a prospect’s industry, size, location or revenue—and are often ineffective ways of describing your actual best targets. Also too often, organizations allow their ICP to remain static for years on end, failing to reflect changes both internally and in the market.

Rev has developed AI-driven ICPs using exegraphic data to build better customer profiles that understand how companies behave and change. But even with more traditional ICPs, re-evaluating who you are selling to (and who you’ve already sold to) will help you understand who your actual ideal customers are—rather than what a PowerPoint says they are.

The benefits of re-evaluating (and re-re-evaluating) your ICP are significant:

  • Engage your current customers. Presuming that your best customers do not change over time is a sure way to lose them to competitors offering products that better suit their needs. 
  • Grab the attention of new prospects. By understanding what makes your best customers tick, you can refine your messaging to speak to the needs and pain points of act-alike companies.
  • Maximize your pipeline. You can compare accounts in your pipeline to your active ICP to determine which matches to emphasize. 
  • Maximize your resources. Ditto for the companies you have not yet made first contact with—understanding which target accounts are most likely to bite increases the power of your revenue teams.

 

Dig in deeper with existing accounts 

If you find through evaluating your ICP that you already have deep market penetration, it still does not mean you’ve exhausted your market. It may well mean you need to optimize your approach to account expansion. 

Companies with deep penetration and a product-led growth motion often struggle to know which accounts to target next, and why. After all, in tough economic times, upselling is not always a strategic move. Identifying which accounts will be most receptive to expansion is critical to maximizing revenue teams’ resources. 

Exegraphic data can surface those signals. Exegraphics identify the trends for the accounts that have already expanded, increasing confidence in your prioritization of the target account list for potential upsells.

The right data can also evaluate potential expansion for each one of your company’s products and services. Getting granular about not only who is ripe for expansion, but who is ripe for expansion in which direction, keeps your aim centered and results in more successful targeting. 

Depending on the size of your customer base, it might also be important to segment existing accounts into 1:1, 1:few or 1:many engagement plans, according to their exegraphic matches. This segmentation enables account managers to spend the most time with customers that are high-fit for expansion opportunities. 

No matter the scale and complexity of your offerings, the actionable insights provided by exegraphic data will help you identify which current accounts are ripe for upsells and expansion—further improving your reach into your current market, without the opportunity and financial cost of breaking into a new one.

 

Be savvy about leaving the fortress for new markets

Now, you may find—immediately, or in the future—that your company really has exhausted its current market. Or, perhaps entering new markets is integral to your larger GTM strategy.

In either case, tapping into new market segments opens up a world of potential new customers. It’s an aggressive strategy in times when many customers are tightening their belts—and also looking for effective solutions.

The strategy is risky, too. What if you invest marketing resources in a market segment for 12 months only to fall flat?

Fortunately, you can minimize the risk with a data-driven approach. You are starting new, but you don’t have to start cold. 

 

Trust your real ICP

In-depth ICPs, such as Rev’s aiCPs, will identify act-alike organizations, even if they look nothing alike (and they often don’t between markets). This enables you to get much clearer about targeting accounts in the new market: odds are, your best customers in the old market will mirror your most likely best customers in the new one.

Finding companies in a new segment that have the same “fit” and “ready” characteristics as your best customers minimizes risk and maximizes the potential for gains. Companies in very different market segments might have very similar internal operations that make them a great candidate for your product or service. 

You want to aim your outbound teams at these prospects to maximize leads they can convert into sales. Exegraphics and aiCPs equip your outbound teams to go after the best-fit targets, reducing the time spent on fruitless cold outreach.

 

Deploy a SWAT team

In fact, you can make this approach even more surgical to reduce risk and increase effectiveness. Before fully divesting from your company’s core focus—or before fully committing to a new market—test it with a SWAT team.

Think back to the fortress: you are unlikely to leave it in force while dispersing your forces in all directions. You’re much more likely to leave the fortress for a specific target, with a strategic approach. And why empty the fortress at all if you can send out the equivalent of a few hardy scouts to test the terrain?

Key word here is test. We recommend resisting the urge to over-rotate (and over-invest); instead, we advocate for this SWAT-team approach in a new market: lightly staffed with strong expertise, able to pivot and adapt on the fly. Think something like one business development rep, two AEs and light marketing support.

After all, if you’re using the power of exegraphics and aiCPs, you already have rigor in your process: you know you’re sending reps after prospects most likely to bite. Developing a few good pieces of early messaging and simple collateral can test the market.

Then see what happens. Do you get engagement? Are the reps able to close deals? If not, what needs to happen differently? 

This approach accelerates the information-gathering period and helps you assess, quickly and definitively, whether a new market segment is actually viable. This approach manages to get you answers in 3-6 months, not the more typical 12-18 months (plus exponential expenses) needed to determine market fit.

 

Final thoughts

The Gartner report referenced above could hardly sound more dire about new market expansion. It reads: “Tech CEOs face losing market share to competitors from neglecting existing customers and the expansion opportunities within them.”

The inverse is simple: Don’t neglect them. 

But what that looks like in practice is much more than the absence of neglect—it’s the presence of active re-evaluation of the current market, especially existing accounts, to develop a living, breathing, evolving ICP. 

It’s the development of exegraphic data to optimize account expansion. 

And, when new market penetration happens, it means doing so surgically and scientifically—with precision, experimentation and speed.

Take a step in the right direction, and let us build your aiCP for free. We’ll show you the exegraphics behind your best customers—and show you how to identify the accounts ready for expansion.

MQL vs. SQL: What’s the real difference?

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Marketing and sales teams use a lot of acronyms, and we throw them around like everyone knows what they mean. Most people in the field quickly catch on and come to understand the words associated with the acronym, but often only at a superficial level. That’s exactly the case with MQL and SQL.

We know that MQL stands for marketing qualified lead, and SQL stands for sales qualified lead. But what do those terms actually mean? How are they different? How are they related?

This blog post breaks it down for you.

 

What is a marketing qualified lead?

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is an individual that the marketing team has identified as a good fit for your product or service. The person has shown signs of interest (or need) in what you have to offer. These signs often include activities like downloading content from your website, signing up for a webinar, clicking an email link or filling out a contact form.

 

What is a sales qualified lead?

A sales qualified lead (SQL) is an individual that the sales team has identified as ready to move forward in the sales process. This means that the lead has expressed interest in purchasing your product or service and is ready to take action. 

Some SQLs were once MQLs. Others began as SQLs from the get-go. That’s because what makes an SQL an SQL is the sales-vetting process. You see, your sales team could get an MQL and qualify them as being ready to take the next step in the purchasing process and that’s how they’d become an SQL. Sales can also prospect and determine that the individual they spoke to is ready—bypassing marketing altogether and jumping straight into conversations with sales. 

How does a sales team know if a prospect or MQL is ready to move forward in the sales process? Often, the prospect or lead may request more information, ask for a quote, and respond to follow-up emails or calls from the sales team. 

While an SQL shows more potential to become a customer than an early-stage MQL, they still need to be nurtured until they are ready to purchase. 

 

MQL vs. SQL

MQLs and SQLs are both leads. But, as you can see, they’re not the same. To get really clear on what we touched on already, here’s what you need to know: 

  • The primary difference between an MQL and SQL is the intent to purchase
  • MQLs are often characterized by their interest in your product or service
  • SQLs have expressed interest in buying

But that’s not all. There are some other differences, and they include:

 

1. Behavior

MQLs have interacted with a company’s marketing efforts (such as viewing website content, engaging on social media and downloading content). SQLs are leads who have expressed an intent to buy by responding to a sales pitch or taking other action.

 

2. Timing 

Generally speaking, most MQLs take longer to become customers compared to SQLs. MQLs must go through marketing’s nurture process, while SQLs are ready to engage with your sales team. 

 

3. Conversion rate

MQLs typically have a lower conversion rate than SQLs, as they are still in the process of being nurtured and educated on the product or service. SQLs already know what they want and are more likely to convert into customers. 

 

4. Demographics

MQLs may or may not have demographics—things like age, gender, location and job title—associated with them. You don’t need to have all the details to have an MQL. You just need enough. SQLs, on the other hand, always do. Your sales team likely gathered the missing data while talking to the lead.

 

5. Lead score

Lead scoring is a process used by marketing and sales teams to rank leads in order of their potential value. This process is done by assigning a numerical score to each lead based on their behavior and interactions with a company’s marketing and sales efforts. 

MQLs typically have lower lead scores than SQLs. This is because MQLs are still in the early, nurturing stages of moving from “fit” to “ready” while MQLs are ready to make the move from “ready” to “tell me where to sign.”

 

6. Lead nurturing strategies

MQLs must be nurtured through the funnel with content tailored to their needs. This includes personalized emails, webinars, blogs or demo videos.

SQLs need to be nurtured, with content focused on closing the deal. This could include follow-up emails, special offers or discounts, product demos, and case studies, to name a few.

 

7. Request for contact

Studies show that SQLs are 2.5x more likely to request contact than MQLs. SQLs have already expressed an interest in the product or service and are ready to purchase. MQLs, on the other hand, are still in the process of being educated about the product or service. 

SQLs who request to be contacted are usually further down the funnel and more likely to become customers—faster.

 

What comes first: MQL or SQL

The MQL stage is the first step in the sales and marketing funnel. It typically involves getting potential buyers interested in what your product or service can do for them. MQLs are usually scored based on their engagement level, which helps determine if and when they move forward down the funnel. 

The SQL stage is the end of the funnel, where buyers decide whether to purchase your product or service. Here, buyers are looking into things such as 

  • Sales: The discounts and offers available
  • Pricing: What works best for their budget 
  • Financing: How they can best finance the purchase and whether they need to take advantage of payment plans or other options
  • Technology: Whether the product offers the best technology for their needs 

MQLs usually start at the awareness stage, but only sometimes. They often end up as an SQL in the conversion stage of the marketing funnel. Successful MQL-to-SQL conversions improve the overall efficiency of your marketing campaigns and increase the chances of making a sale.

For a  successful MQL to SQL conversion, sales and marketing teams need to be aligned  and understand what’s happening throughout the entire funnel. Here are a few things you can do to optimize for MQL-SQL conversion.

 

1.   Have a lead scoring system in place to properly assess MQLs

Lead scoring involves using MQL scoring parameters—such as website visits, form submissions and others—to determine the likelihood of an MQL converting into an SQL

For example, if an MQL has visited your website 10 times and opened your emails five times, they would receive more points than someone who has only been to your website twice and opened your emails once. 

This process helps ensure MQLs are being evaluated accurately and that the most promising MQLs move forward in the funnel. 

 

2. Share MQL data with the sales team

Once MQLs have been scored, it’s important to share this data with your sales team so they can focus their efforts on MQLs that have a higher chance of closing. By sharing MQL data, the sales team can more easily assess MQLs and determine which MQLs are most likely to become SQLs. 

 

3. Establish MQL-SQL goals

It’s also vital to establish MQL-SQL goals so you can track progress and measure success. Setting MQL-SQL goals sets up parameters around what you should be tracking and allows you to better understand how MQLs are converting and what areas to improve. It’s all about optimizing for the highest possible conversion rate.

Your goals should include the following:

  • Conversion rate: How many MQLs convert to SQLs
  • Conversion time: How quickly MQLs are converting 
  • Lead yield rate: How many MQLs are being generated
  • Engagement rate: How engaged MQLs are with your product or service (this is determined by calculating the weighted engagement score)

 

4. Maintain MQLs

Maintaining MQLs is also important to ensure MQL-SQL conversions. Maintaining MQLs involves staying in contact with them, providing them with content and resources, and responding to any questions or concerns they may have. 

This also helps build relationships and trust, which can ultimately lead to MQL-SQL conversion. 

It’s important to note that MQLs should not be pressured to purchase. This is because MQLs are still learning about your product or service and need time to decide. So, this process could take weeks or even months. 

Following these steps will put you on the right track for growing your MQL-SQL conversion rate, but it won’t guarantee that all will convert. Knowing this up front is important because it removes the friction that too often lives between the sales and marketing team—when sales blames marketing for sending poor leads and marketing blames sales for not correctly approaching the lead. In reality, some leads may not convert because of factors outside of your control: the lead is shifting strategies, had their budget reduced, etc.

To facilitate all of it—high conversion and deep learning, it’s important that sales and marketing teams stay in regular communication. 

 

Final thoughts

Whether you’re in marketing focused on MQLs or in sales focused on SQLs, the reality is that you need to focus on accounts that show the most promise. You don’t have the time or resources to be engaging with targets that will never close. And in order to bring in the right leads, you need to look deeper than the firmographics that make up the traditional ICP.

With Rev, you’ll be tapping into the pattern-matching capabilities of AI to evaluate your best customers, discover their deep characteristics that make them your best customers and find other accounts that share those same traits. It’s that simple. And just like that, you’ll be bringing in MQLs and SQLs that have a higher propensity to engage and move through the funnel faster.

We’d love to show you how it works. Contact us and we’ll conduct a free ICP audit and give you a list of target accounts that you should go after next.

What is revenue operations?

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You may think revenue operations (RevOps) sounds like just another buzzword. But it’s actually given a name to a function that’s been needed in the data-driven B2B world for a LONG time. 

Because for the B2B businesses that have a RevOps team, recent reports show they’ve benefited from a 100-200% increase in digital marketing ROI, a 10-20% increase in sales productivity and a 71% improvement in stock performance.

So, if RevOps is the new secret ingredient for consistent revenue growth and efficiency—you’re right to want to know how your business can implement its own RevOps function. In this case, you’ve come to the right place!

In this guide, we’ll give you an in-depth overview of revenue operations and why it’s become an increasingly important focus for B2B companies of all sizes and industries. Specifically, we’ll be discussing topics and questions like: 

  • What is revenue operations? And how is it different from other operations teams? 
  • What exactly do RevOps teams do? What are their goals, metrics and core responsibilities? 
  • Signs your organization would benefit from a RevOps team.
  • Should you build a RevOps team by recruiting new talent or reassigning responsibilities among existing employees?
  • How to build a comprehensive revenue operations strategy.
  • Resources for learning more about RevOps through online certification programs, podcasts and professional communities.

A lot to cover? Absolutely. But if your business wants a smooth transition to revenue operations, this guide will be a valuable companion. So, get comfortable, and let’s begin!

 

What is revenue operations (RevOps)?

Revenue operations is a team or function within your organization that focuses on optimizing revenue growth by aligning the goals and strategies of sales, marketing and customer success teams. 

Leveraging data and technology, revenue operations teams create and implement roadmaps to enable those go-to-market teams to work collaboratively toward achieving predictable revenue from new and existing customers.

 

What do RevOps teams do?

RevOps teams are responsible for analyzing the customer experience and identifying gaps that cause existing customers to churn and potential new customers (aka leads) to fall through the cracks. 

RevOps then works with go-to-market teams to systematically address those gaps, eliminate redundancies in revenue-generating processes and align revenue goals across all stages of the customer journey.

As they work towards those goals, some specific task and RevOps best practices include:

  • Identifying the core characteristics of a company’s ideal customer profile (ICP) for better targeting and lead generation
  • Communicating with stakeholders across the organization to ensure alignment of revenue strategies and goals
  • Leveraging key data points to improve revenue forecasting, including measuring revenue performance metrics such as conversion rates and customer lifetime value
  • Developing strategies to increase revenue through upsells and cross-sells, including optimizing pricing models and empowering customer success teams to contribute to revenue growth
  • Providing revenue insights and analysis to support strategic decision-making across all go-to-market teams
  • Analyzing customer data and revenue trends to identify areas of opportunity and risk, such as churn and lost revenue
  • Developing a lean and efficient tech stack so that all teams have consistent, reliable access to the same revenue data and performance metrics

 

How is revenue operations different from sales operations? 

At its core, RevOps focuses on driving revenue growth through data-driven processes and activities. These activities include managing pipelines, optimizing revenue generation strategies based on real-time data insights and tracking revenue performance metrics.

In contrast, sales operations (Sales Ops) teams typically focus more on the operational aspects of selling, such as lead management, pipeline development and customer relationship management. 

That being said, RevOps teams should work closely with Sales Ops teams to ensure that sales teams are effectively using revenue data from marketing and customer success teams to inform the prioritization of accounts and lead generation strategies.

 

How is revenue operations different from marketing operations?

Marketing Operations (MOps) teams focus primarily on marketing activities such as lead generation, demand generation, content creation and developing deep insights into a company’s ideal buyer. 

RevOps teams support MOps by developing strategies to optimize the effectiveness of those marketing activities and bring revenue generation to the forefront of marketing strategies. For example, the RevOps team might work with MOps to develop a lead-scoring framework, which helps the marketing team prioritize leads based on revenue potential.

 

How is revenue operations different from business operations?

Business operations is another team that helps to drive revenue generation in a company. But its focus is more on the day-to-day tasks and processes needed to keep an organization running smoothly. 

For example, business operations teams may manage budgets and expenses, improve internal communication and optimize revenue generation through marketing campaigns. On the other hand, RevOps teams are specifically focused on revenue generation, leveraging data and analytics to identify growth opportunities and optimize revenue performance. 

 

Key RevOps metrics

How do RevOps teams measure the success of their efforts? By tracking the metrics related to revenue generation, revenue retention and growth. Those metrics include:

  • Customer lifetime value (CLV): The revenue your business can expect to generate from each customer over the entire time they remain subscribed to your product. By tracking CLV, RevOps teams can identify which customers are most profitable and focus their efforts on nurturing these relationships.
  • Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The cost associated with acquiring new customers for your business. By tracking CAC, RevOps teams can determine how much revenue your business needs to generate from each new customer to break even.
  • Sales pipeline velocity: The speed at which sales teams are closing deals. By tracking this metric, RevOps teams can determine how quickly new revenue is generated from your sales pipeline and identify potential areas for improvement.
  • Customer churn rate: The percentage of customers who leave your business after a given time period. By tracking churn, RevOps teams can identify trends and work to improve revenue generation by focusing on retaining existing customers.
  • Revenue retention: The total revenue generated by a business over a given time period, compared to revenue from the same period in the previous year. RevOps teams use this metric to track and identify areas where revenue growth may have slowed or stopped.
  • Recurring revenue: The monthly recurring revenue (MRR) or annual recurring revenue (ARR) generated by a business from subscriptions, memberships or similar long-term revenue streams. RevOps teams use this metric to focus on customers likely to be long-term, loyal revenue sources.
  • Renewals, upsells and cross-sells: The revenue-generating activities businesses pursue to increase the revenue generated from existing customers. By tracking revenue generation from renewals, upsells and cross-sells, RevOps teams can identify ways to optimize the customer experience and areas where additional revenue growth may be possible.
  • Net promoter score (NPS): The percentage of customers who recommend a business’s product or service to a friend or colleague. This metric can help RevOps teams identify and address customer pain points to increase revenue and customer satisfaction.
  • Sales funnel conversion rate: The percentage of revenue generation opportunities that result in closed deals. This metric can provide RevOps teams with valuable insights into how well their sales pipeline is performing.
  • Sales forecasting accuracy: The degree to which a company can accurately predict how much revenue it will generate in the future. This metric can help RevOps teams identify areas where revenue generation may lag and inform go-to-marketing teams of revenue growth opportunities they might otherwise miss.
  • Sales cycle time: The time it takes for the sales team to close a deal. This metric can provide RevOps teams with valuable information about how efficiently deals are progressing through the sales cycle and whether the leads entering the sales pipeline are actually a good fit for the business. 
  • Average deal size: The average value of deals closed by the sales team. This metric can help revenue operations teams determine the revenue potential of new opportunities and identify opportunities to increase revenue by targeting higher-value deals.
  • Revenue: The total revenue generated by the sales team. This metric can help RevOps teams assess revenue performance, identify areas for growth and set revenue targets and goals.

 

Essential tech stack for RevOps teams

There are hundreds of B2B software platforms and tools on the market today, each with a range of features that promise to revolutionize how your business generates revenue. 

But one of the goals of a RevOps team is to evaluate the tools available and simplify to only those that are truly essential to eliminate silos and get all revenue-generating teams working together seamlessly. 

So, which ones are actually essential? Here are our recommendations:

  • Customer relationship management (CRM) system: A CRM helps your revenue operations team keep track of all customer interactions and data, including deals won or lost, revenue earned and support tickets.
  • Project management software: Project management software helps keep revenue operations teams organized and on track. It can also help manage revenue-generating projects, such as marketing campaigns or product launches.
  • Data analytics tool: A data analytics tool helps RevOps teams monitor revenue performance metrics, identify trends and opportunities, and make data-driven decisions.
  • Marketing automation software: Marketing automation software helps you create and manage automated campaigns based on customer data.
  • Sales Development Platform: A Sales Development Platform streamlines the process of identifying new market segments, targeting accounts with a high propensity to engage, reducing churn and driving predictable revenue growth.

Your tech stack may include additional tools and software, depending on your organization. But the tools we’ve listed here will give you a solid foundation to build on.

 

Signs your organization is ready to transition to RevOps

Sold on the benefits of RevOps but still not sure it’s the right next step for your organization? Here are some signs that indicate your organization is ready for a transition to RevOps:

  • Sales, marketing and customer success teams that are not aligned or working effectively together to minimize revenue leakage and optimize revenue opportunities
  • Inconsistent revenue reporting across teams and business units, making it difficult for stakeholders to understand key revenue metrics
  • Silos of revenue-related data and dispersed revenue performance information across multiple platforms and tools
  • A lack of clearly defined revenue processes and revenue-focused roles within the organization

Sound familiar? If so, you’ve taken the first step in addressing these problems. Next, you’ll need a strategic approach to building a revenue operations team with the skills, experience and mindset to drive revenue performance in an increasingly competitive business landscape.

 

How to build a high-performing RevOps team from scratch

Should you recruit new talent to join your revenue operations team? Or should you transfer existing employees from other roles within the company? There is no one-size-fits-all answer to these questions.

That being said, you’ll typically want to build a RevOps team of existing employees if you already have the talent in-house that you can effectively reassign or cross-train for RevOps roles. This approach is a great way to tap into the expertise already available within your organization, while minimizing disruption to your business.

However, if you need new talent, you’ll need to consider recruiting to fill new RevOps roles or outsourcing. Outsourcing can be a great option if you’re looking to add specialized skills or expertise to your revenue operations function or if you’re looking to scale your revenue operations team rapidly.

 

RevOps team structure 

Ideally, the team will have a leader responsible for overseeing and implementing revenue generation strategies and communicating with the heads of go-to-market teams and the company CEO. Generally, the person in this role will hold a title like Head of Revenue Operations or Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). The team members under the leader will work to execute revenue generation strategies, analyze revenue data and metrics, and provide insights on revenue performance. 

 

Keys skills needed for all RevOps team members

Regardless of how you build your RevOps team, there are a few essential skills and attributes that you should look for in your candidates. 

For example, RevOps professionals must have strong analytical and critical thinking skills and the ability to interpret data and use it to inform strategies. In addition, members of your RevOps teams need excellent communication skills to effectively collaborate with other departments in your organization and external stakeholders.

For more information on developing the ideal RevOps team structure, including sample job descriptions for roles like VP of RevOps, check out how to build a high-performing RevOps team.

 

How to develop a comprehensive revenue operations strategy

Without a strategy, revenue operations teams may struggle to tap into their full potential. To create a robust revenue operations plan, we recommend doing the following activities:

 

Use data to better understand the customer journey and your ICP

One of the most critical components of a revenue operations strategy is understanding your customers and their buying journey. This requires gathering data about customer behavior and preferences, which you can use to create targeted marketing campaigns and personalized product offerings.

To better understand your ICP, we recommend using exegraphic data that looks at commonalities in the behavior your best customers display when they’re ready to buy. For example, you might review the data to see what type of challenges these businesses typically face when making a purchasing decision or what kind of sales and marketing messages resonate with them most.

With this information, you can create a revenue operations strategy that aligns with your ideal customer’s needs and preferences, helping you reach potential buyers more effectively and generate revenue more efficiently.

 

Identify roadblocks causing churn and preventing conversions

While revenue operations teams can help businesses unlock revenue potential, it’s essential to identify roadblocks that may negatively impact revenue generation. Some common roadblocks that may be causing churn and preventing conversions include:

  • Poor lead quality
  • Ineffective targeting of key customer segments
  • Unclear pricing strategies
  • Limited understanding of customer needs and pain points

 

Optimize and integrate the tech stack for revenue-generating teams  

How many tools and platforms are go-to-market teams currently using to support revenue generation efforts? Can you optimize the tech stack so everyone can access the essential tools for the job and that these tools integrate seamlessly?

Sometimes, you can reduce churn and improve conversions by optimizing your tech stack for revenue-generating teams. For example, if all teams begin using the same data warehouse for product and revenue analytics, they can easily share insights to understand customer needs and pain points better.

Additionally, by integrating your marketing automation software with your CRM, you can ensure that every team has access to the essential data and that these tools are working in tandem to drive revenue growth.

 

Work with heads of go-to-market teams to improve effectiveness of strategies 

Next, the head of your RevOps team will need to work with go-to-market teams to align on strategies, data and goals. These teams will play a key role in helping you to optimize revenue by providing valuable insights into your target audience, identifying revenue-driving marketing campaigns and tracking ways to prevent revenue leakage.

These teams will also need help from RevOps to ensure that revenue-generating activities are well-aligned with revenue goals and to provide them with the tools and resources they need for success.

 

Create a system of regular tracking and measurement of essential metrics 

Your RevOps team will regularly track and measure revenue-related metrics, such as customer lifetime value and churn. Your RevOps team can achieve this by establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) for each revenue-generating activity and implementing systems that provide the necessary data for measuring progress.

Ideally, your organization will view revenue operations as an ongoing, iterative process. This means that RevOps teams should continuously evaluate the performance of revenue-generating activities and make any necessary adjustments.

 

Foster open communication and feedback to continuously optimize strategies 

Speak to any RevOps professional, and they’ll tell you that revenue operations isn’t just about optimizing revenue generation—it’s also about getting the organization to work more holistically and improve collaboration for maximum efficiency.

This can be accomplished through frequent communication and feedback between revenue-generating teams where each team considers questions like:

  • How does our work contribute to other teams’ revenue strategies and targets?
  • Is there any data, tool or process that could help our team’s revenue generation efforts work more efficiently?
  • What roadblocks or bottlenecks are we encountering that could be prevented at earlier stages of the customer journey?

By establishing clear goals and expectations, creating feedback loops to monitor performance and encouraging open communication, RevOps teams can maximize revenue growth across the organization.

 

Resources to learn more about RevOps 

RevOps is still a relatively new concept in the business world. Still, there are several resources available to help you learn more! Here are some additional resources to dive deeper into RevOps:

 

Revenue operations training and certification courses

Revenue operations podcasts

Revenue operations online communities

Final thoughts

Whether you’re looking to implement RevOps for the first time or are looking to improve your existing revenue operations strategy, we hope this guide has helped. 

Specifically, we hope it’s helped you better understand revenue operations, the benefits it can bring to your business and how to start building a comprehensive strategy to maximize revenue growth.

Want to get the most out of your RevOps strategy? Start by using exegraphic data to develop a deep understanding of your ICP to ensure you’re prioritizing the accounts with the highest propensity to engage with your business. 

Contact us for a free ICP audit—and get a peek at the exegraphic data behind your best customers.

The navigational power of RevOps, with Rosalyn Santa Elena

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RevOps has long existed as an organizational function—predating the term RevOps itself—yet so many teams struggle to integrate a dedicated RevOps team. Should it slot alongside (or above, or below) Sales and Marketing? How does this work?

Rosalyn Santa Elena, founder and Chief Revenue Operations Officer at The RevOps Collective, believes it’s a matter of misplaced focus. Where people report and who owns which team is much less critical than getting all the revenue teams in an organization to function in alignment.

“I always think about everybody in their own boat rowing towards their goals, and everything’s running efficiently,” she says. “You’re meeting constantly. You’re collaborating. You’re partnering. Everything you do, you’re doing from that end-to-end lens.”

Structurally, that alignment can take many forms. But rather than siloing RevOps from its brethren, creating a funnel where RevOps and Marketing and Sales folks report into a single organization is where Rosalyn identifies the greatest benefit.

“Think about getting everybody into the same boat,” she says, “and then rowing together.”

Rosalyn is a long-time go-to-market and revenue operations practitioner who elevates, empowers and enables organizations with her RevOps expertise. In this interview, she offers actionable perspectives on how a focused RevOps team can make measurable operational improvements for a revenue organization, even on the choppiest economic seas. 

 

RevOps eases operations

Once everyone is in the same boat, RevOps provides the navigation. Current market conditions have created a storm that, frankly, is proving brutal for many businesses. RevOps can’t get rid of the storm—but it can bring calm to the storm for the other rowers in the boat.

Rosalyn identifies three areas where RevOps smooths operations for the organization:

  • Efficiency—helping the teams do the things they need to do in the most seamless way possible. “RevOps does that by setting proper expectations,” Rosalyn says. “We set guidelines through clear rules of engagement, clear processes, so that everybody understands what they’re responsible for, what their role is and how that plays out in the customer journey.” Driving efficiency especially eases poor handoffs between teams, which are a common pain point in revenue organizations.
  • Optimization—doing better with less. Lean into what’s working—the things that are going to produce the best results—and back away from the things that aren’t working right, or that are too slow or costly. “In this type of market, you want to focus your time, money, resources, people on the things that are going to give you the best outcomes fastest,” Rosalyn says. And that applies to everything from focusing on target accounts to investing in your tech stack. You want the most ROI, across the board.
  • Analysis—bubbling up insights about what’s working, and what isn’t. In other words: figuring out why things are optimal and efficient. “We’re always testing,” Rosalyn says. “We’re doing a lot of what-if scenario planning to understand where the business needs to focus. Where do we want to go? And maybe even more importantly, where do we not want to go?”

 

RevOps identifies the best targets 

As if getting everyone’s boat through the storm isn’t enough, RevOps also helps the organization make sure it’s navigating to the right X’s on the right maps: aka, the best possible target accounts.

“Even with an ICP, a lot of companies say they sell to B2B SaaS. Okay, are they going to target 50,000 customers? Probably not,” Rosalyn says. “There’s a lot of opportunity for companies to really focus in on the best accounts and the best customers for them.”

Too many companies don’t try to filter out those best prospects until they’re already in the funnel. They know what really matters, yet they continue to spend time and money on accounts that aren’t the best fit for their products. 

Rosalyn likes to ask C-suite executives about who they sell to—and who they should be selling to. Who has the biggest pain that their solution solves? A lot of times, those leaders require some coaching and some digging to get to who really is buying their product—both which companies, and which people within those companies.

Particularly in the current challenging market, this type of assessment can actually uncover opportunities that you haven’t even considered. New market segments, for sure—and also opportunities within your own revenue processes.

“I’ve been talking to a lot of folks about win/loss,” Rosalyn says. “Why do their customers leave? There’s so much learning there that a lot of organizations forget to tap into. They want to improve the high-level win/loss metric instead of really understanding all the incremental improvements that they can make.”

 

RevOps drives incremental improvement

Speaking of incremental improvements: RevOps drives its impacts in large part by redirecting and focusing resources. Making the case with the right metrics eases buy-in at all levels and ensures that RevOps really is navigating that boat through the waves.

There is certainly no shortage of quality data out there, so Rosalyn highlights three KPIs that make the difference for RevOps teams, especially in tough economic times.

  • Focus on conversion rate over leads and meetings. “You want to progress prospects through the deal cycle,” she says. “We talk about how many leads we got and how many meetings we booked. But how many of those turned into actual deals? How much revenue?” There are then different metrics within conversion to show how RevOps can incrementally improve stages within the funnel. Even one or two percent improvement in conversion can mean a lot of revenue dollars.
  • Focus on net dollar retention in addition to net new acquisition. You want to keep your customer base happy to protect the revenue that you have, as well as looking for chances to expand within that install base. Even when customers are contracting, they’re still looking for new revenue opportunities. “Companies tend to spend a lot of money on net-new acquisition instead of really looking for that white space within their existing customer base,” Rosalyn says.
  • Double down on predictable revenue. RevOps teams need to understand their forecasts and test if they are truly accurate. “Now, every deal counts, every dollar counts even more than before,” Rosalyn says. So lock down that predictable revenue by making incremental improvements to shorten the time-to-close and mitigate the risk of delays. Inevitably, revenue is going to slow down—and anything RevOps can do to keep deals moving forward is going to make a difference.

 

Final thoughts: RevOps communicates solutions, not problems

All the impact that a focused RevOps team can have on an organization ultimately comes down to how well that team can communicate. Think again about the rowers in the boat: without an effective coxswain, the team rows out of sync and can drift off course.

“If I can only have one skill to be really good at, I want it to be communication,” Rosalyn says. “It’s not just about writing or speaking well. It’s about the ability to drive consensus while bringing everybody along.”

Communicating internally is actually quite like a sales cycle. You have to identify the problem, understand the problem, come prepared with a solution and demonstrate its value. Because truly focused RevOps leadership is not about pointing out problems—it’s about recommending better ways forward.

“Always come with a call to action,” Rosalyn says. “The more you do that, the more you become a thought partner, a business partner. And then you start to elevate your team.”

B2B revenue generation: Definition, examples and 7 strategies to increase profits

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Did you know that revenue generation isn’t just the responsibility of your sales team? In fact, all departments—including marketing, customer success, revenue operations and even finance—play a role in driving the growth of your business.

So, if you want to ensure that your B2B company is profitable, it’s essential to have a strong revenue generation strategy that empowers each department to contribute to the bottom line.

But what is revenue generation exactly? And how do you improve your revenue generation process without sacrificing the customer experience? Good questions! And we’re going to answer them in this blog post as we look at:

  • The meaning of revenue generation
  • Examples of revenue generation tasks for sales, marketing, customer success, finance and revenue operations teams
  • 7 profitable strategies your business can implement to start generating more revenue

Let’s begin!

 

What is revenue generation?

Revenue generation is the process of creating and capturing sales opportunities for a company. This process can involve various activities such as identifying market segments, setting pricing strategies and converting leads to customers.

Without an efficient revenue generation process, your business may fail to attract and retain new customers. In the B2B world, this process can be even more complex, as sales cycles tend to be longer and involve multiple decision-makers.

 

Which teams are responsible for revenue generation activities? 

Revenue generation isn’t a task reserved for one specific team within a company. Instead, it’s a collaborative effort between different departments, including marketing, sales, customer success, finance and revenue operations—with each team having specific responsibilities and tasks.

 

Sales

You probably already know that the sales team is responsible for generating revenue. Sales Development Reps (SDRs) do this directly through prospecting and closing deals. But they also play a crucial role in this process by:

  • Identifying and targeting the right leads based on an understanding of their pain points and how the company’s solutions can address them
  • Proactively reaching out to leads through cold calling, emailing, networking and other lead generation activities
  • Building and maintaining relationships with clients to increase the likelihood of repeat purchases
  • Conducting product demos with potential customers
  • Tracking and analyzing sales performance data to improve processes and strategies continually

 

Marketing

Your marketing team’s role in revenue generation is just as crucial as the sales team’s. They generate demand for your product or service, increase the flow of high-quality leads and create brand awareness. Ultimately, your marketing team aims to guide potential customers through the initial stages of your sales funnel and convert them into qualified leads by:

  • Creating content such as blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, and webinars to attract and educate potential buyers
  • Launching marketing campaigns, often in collaboration with the sales team, to drive leads and conversions
  • Conducting market and competitor research to inform go-to-market strategies
  • Building and maintaining relationships with key industry influencers and partners to increase brand visibility and credibility
  • Tracking and analyzing lead conversion rates, website traffic and other relevant metrics 

 

Customer success

The customer experience can make or break any company’s revenue generation efforts. The customer success team takes ownership of ensuring a positive customer journey that supports and contributes to revenue growth by:

  • Providing onboarding and training to ensure customers are fully using your product
  • Building strong relationships with clients to encourage loyalty and retention
  • Collecting customer feedback and making suggestions for product improvements
  • Recommending new products or services based on customer needs and interests
  • Working with the sales team to upsell or cross-sell additional products and services

 

Finance

The finance team often isn’t thought of as directly contributing to revenue generation. But they play a crucial role in helping your company make informed decisions about pricing, product offerings and investments. For example, finance contributes to revenue growth by:

  • Analyzing and forecasting financial performance so the company can set realistic revenue goals
  • Providing insights on pricing strategies and identifying new revenue streams
  • Conducting cost analyses to maximize profitability
  • Ensuring compliance with financial regulations and minimizing financial risk
  • Using financial data to drive decision-making and optimize revenue generation efforts

 

Revenue operations

Revenue operations (RevOps) is an emerging business function becoming increasingly crucial in data-driven B2B companies. If your business has a RevOps team, you know their main priority is to identify and eliminate any roadblocks to revenue generation. To achieve that goal, the RevOps team will perform tasks like:

  • Aligning the message and strategy of all go-to-market teams to ensure consistency and optimize revenue generation
  • Implementing sales technology, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, to improve accuracy and efficiency in revenue forecasting
  • Going beyond traditional lead scoring methods to understand the ideal customer profile (ICP) and determine the signals that indicate a lead is ready to buy
  • Optimizing pricing and packaging for maximum revenue and profitability
  • Analyzing data and presenting insights to inform decision-making for the whole revenue generation team

 

7 strategies to improve your B2B revenue generation process

Generating sustainable revenue sounds like a no-brainer for any business. But it can often be a challenge for B2B companies that sell complex or high-value products to other businesses.

So, you may need to experiment with different strategies and tactics to find what works best. Here are 7 revenue generation strategies that can help your business boost profitability.

 

Strategy 1: Use exegraphics to better understand your ICP

Your ideal customer profile (ICP) is a crucial component of any revenue generation process. Why? Because understanding who your ICP is helps you focus on the leads most likely to convert into customers and bring in revenue.

Unfortunately, many businesses have trouble accurately defining their ICP because they rely on superficial information like company size, annual revenue or industry. But does that type of information tell you whether a particular lead is actually a good fit for your product or if they’re ready to buy it anytime soon? Not really.

By using exegraphics—data and insights on the characteristics, behaviors and needs of your best customers—you can more accurately define and target your ICP. When studying a company’s exegraphics, you might find that your best customers tend to have a specific pain point in common when they buy from you, like a need for better data security due to new compliance regulations and a small IT department.

With that information, you can better target similar companies in your outreach efforts and tailor your messaging to address their specific pain points. The only problem is that finding this type of data can be tedious and time-consuming as it’s not readily available in one centralized location.

That’s where Rev comes in. Our AI-powered Sales Development Platform can quickly analyze your current customer data and gather insights into the characteristics and behaviors that your best customers tend to display when they’re ready to buy. This data helps you better understand your ideal customer profile and identify and target similar companies for your outreach efforts.

 

Strategy 2: Invest in demand generation marketing

Demand generation (aka demand gen) involves creating content that attracts the attention of your ideal customer, builds brand awareness, and drives demand for your product or service. Despite being a long-term investment, demand gen can significantly impact revenue generation.

Not only does demand generation bring in new leads, but it also helps with lead nurturing—turning those leads into paying customers. By creating valuable content targeted towards your ideal customer, your target audience will see your brand as a thought leader in the industry and be more likely to do business with you.

Demand generation activities can include content marketing to attract and educate your target audience, using search engine optimization (SEO) to improve visibility on search engines and running targeted advertising campaigns. Learn more by reading our demand generation marketing guide.

 

Strategy 3: Leverage the power of social proof

In his book Influence, Robert Cialdini discusses the power of social proof—the idea that people will mimic the actions of others to fit in or feel safe. In the B2B world, this translates to potential customers being more likely to buy from a company that has proven success in the form of customer reviews and case studies.

Think about it. As a potential customer, you are more likely to trust and believe in the capabilities of a company that has glowing reviews from other companies like yours or has a case study outlining how they successfully solved a problem for a past customer.

So, how can you leverage this to improve your B2B revenue generation strategy? First, ensure that you have a system for collecting and showcasing customer reviews, whether on your website or through third-party review sites.

You can also work with your customer success team to gather and publish case studies highlighting the successes of your past clients. These types of social proof can go a long way in building trust and credibility with potential customers, ultimately leading to more sales and revenue generation.

 

Strategy 4: Empower your customer success team to generate revenue

While the customer success team’s primary focus may be on retention and advocacy, they also can have a significant impact on revenue. But if you want to maximize their potential for revenue generation, it’s essential to provide them with the necessary data and resources.

Access to customer data such as account health, churn likelihood and renewal dates can help the customer success team prioritize accounts and proactively address potential risks. And by equipping them with that information, your customer success team will better understand how to upsell and cross-sell to current customers.

You can also encourage direct collaboration between customer success and sales. In a recent interview, the Chief Customer Officer of AppsFlyer shared just how much of an impact the customer success team can have on revenue generation.

By empowering their customer success managers to identify customer support qualified leads to pass to their sales team, AppsFlyer was able to generate over 300 million dollars in revenue from their existing customers in less than four years!

 

Strategy 5: Master psychological pricing strategies

When was the last time you noticed a price ending in “9” or “99”? Chances are, it was recently. Why? Because this tactic, known as charm pricing, is one of the most commonly used psychological pricing strategies.

Psychological pricing refers to any pricing strategy that uses psychological tricks or techniques to influence customer behavior and drive sales. Along with charm pricing, other examples of psychological pricing strategies include:

  • Prestige pricing: Setting a high price to convey luxury or exclusivity
  • Comparative pricing: Comparing your lower-priced products to higher-priced products
  • Bundle pricing: Offering a discounted price for purchasing multiple products at once

While these pricing tactics may seem subtle, they can actually be effective in driving sales and revenue growth. However, it’s important to use them ethically and make sure they align with your company’s values.

 

Strategy 6: Create the environment of a high-performing SDR team

Whether it’s funding a training program or providing the latest sales technology, investing in your SDR team can help better equip them to close more deals from high-fit accounts. It’s also important to continuously gather feedback from them to improve and fine-tune your messaging, value propositions and lead scoring criteria.

Another way to support your SDR team is by creating a warm lead handoff process between marketing and sales. This process ensures that the leads passed over to your SDRs have already shown interest in your product or solution or are showing signs of being fit and ready to engage.

It’s also crucial to audit your sales pipeline regularly to ensure that your SDRs spend their time on the right deals and target the best-fit accounts rather than wasting time on low-fit leads. For more tips like these, check out our post on 12 steps to build a high-performing SDR team.

 

Strategy 7: Prioritize sales and marketing alignment

It’s unfortunately common for sales and marketing teams to operate in silos, with little communication or collaboration between the two. As a result, quality leads fall through the cracks, marketing feels their efforts aren’t translating into sales, sales feels like they are constantly starting from scratch with few qualified leads and revenue growth suffers.

Sound familiar? If so, it’s time to get these teams on the same page. Because when sales and marketing teams align their efforts, they can create a streamlined approach to generate leads, nurture them through the sales funnel and close more deals

But how do you go about coordinating your sales and marketing teams? It begins with breaking down silos and fostering open communication and collaboration. You can achieve this through regular meetings, joint goal setting, creating shared metrics to track progress, and using the same tools and systems to track leads and sales data.

Sales and marketing alignment is also one of the core goals of a revenue operations team. So, a transition to RevOps at your organization (if you haven’t already) can also play a crucial role in hitting revenue targets by bringing together all the revenue generating teams and aligning their efforts.

 

Final thoughts

Driving consistent revenue growth can be a challenge for B2B companies. But by understanding each team’s role in the revenue generation process and aligning their efforts, you can ensure everyone knows how to contribute to achieving revenue targets.

It also helps to empower your teams with the tools and technology to make revenue generation activities more effective and efficient. For example, Rev’s Sales Development Platform helps you better understand your ICP and the signals that indicate when they’re ready to buy. This information lets you identify and target high-value leads and close deals faster.

Want to see how Rev can improve your revenue generation plan? Contact us and request your free ICP audit! 

 

What chatbots teach revenue teams about using AI

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AI has reached a tipping point in accessibility and proficiency, and Sales and Marketing teams are suddenly engaging with AI in new ways—many for the first time.

They’re using ChatGPT, for instance, to write their B2B prospecting emails, personalization and all. It takes a human five minutes or thirty or an hour to do some prospect research on LinkedIn before they can even get started. AI? It can do it all almost instantaneously. Or can it?

Not all AI tools are created equal. They’re not all trained to do the same thing. A chatbot like ChatGPT might write a heck of an email, but the accuracy of that email, especially when it comes to personalization, may not be as dialed in. As fascinating (and remarkable) as ChatGPT is, it also can’t build you an accurate target account list.

There are, however, AI tools that Sales, Marketing and RevOps teams can (and should) use to run faster and generate quality revenue. The key is to make certain you’re using the right tools to produce accurate and powerful results.

With the lessons learned from AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Google Bard, here is our Rev primer for revenue teams that require up-to-date and spot-on results from the leading edge of AI.

 

AI sources what is available—and it needs quality data

AI can improve lead generation efficiency and speed. So revenue teams absolutely can implement it—just not indiscriminately.

Not all AI is up to the task for what revenue teams need. It can get the details wrong. It did so, infamously and publicly, when Google Bard provided incorrect information about the James Webb Space Telescope.

It’s true that generative AI’s ability to create smooth, coherent, plausible text is impressive. Afterall, that’s what it was trained to do: generate realistic-sounding answers, not necessarily accurate ones. The details can be off. In Sales and Marketing, those details matter.

 

Teaching a robot to love

Here’s an illustrative thought experiment: Pretend that (like a shocking amount of people) you tasked an AI chatbot with writing a love poem for your partner. Could you pass it off as your own?

If you and your partner just met, maybe you could. But if you know each other well, you can’t get away with cold-calling AI to write a love poem. Straight-up, it won’t sound like you.

But it might, if you adjust the parameters: Give the AI chatbot all the love poems you’ve written over the years, then ask it to write a poem in that style. You just might pull it off, because the AI has greater access to relevant data.

 

Data quantity matters too

This is part of why Google Bard dropped the ball on the James Webb Space Telescope data: it’s a very recent news phenomenon, so there simply isn’t much information for the AI chatbot to source its knowledge from. It wrote an answer without sufficient context. If the question had been about the Hubble, Bard’s odds of nailing the answer would have improved dramatically. But, again, its model is designed to pick the most likely words and phrases, not what’s true.

To move the needle on your GTM functions, your AI-driven systems need to be used for what they were trained to do and have access to enough data. Otherwise they will point you in the wrong direction, or just come off sounding… well, off. 

 

Revenue teams require up-to-date data

More data doesn’t just give your AI a better knowledge base to draw from; it improves the AI’s performance—more so than more processing elements. It’s a lot like how a bigger brain doesn’t make a person smarter so much as more experience does.

 

Historical bias causes revenue issues

Yet AI runs into the historical bias problem referenced above with the telescopes: history often overwhelms recent info in AI processing. This is a problem for revenue teams that rely on immediate, relevant data to make decisions both accurately and fast. The lack of data created about today or yesterday can’t stop you from taking action now.

That’s one thing that limits generative AI models like ChatGPT. Put to work for a Sales team, it would miss some timely events and milestones about your target accounts to draft accurate email copy. And if you asked ChatGPT to build you a target account list? Well, it might do a reasonable job of finding a few good targets given enough context about what you’re selling. But generating an accurate list of hundreds or thousands of companies is a fundamentally different task—and absolutely requires specific, up-to-date information. Data that’s even a few months behinds will leave you in the middle of another James Webb Space Telescope situation.

 

LLMs improve accuracy

So, if you’re looking to AI to build your target account list you need to look beyond the hype of generative AI and start looking at AI that’s using large language models (LLM) in ways that leverage up-to-date information that’s most relevant to B2B targeting. That’s how you’ll get outputs that have a high level of accuracy in the details.

LLMs are the deep-learning algorithms that identify relevant data and synthesize it into useful form. Despite the name, they’re not just used for language processing applications like chatbots—they’re used in many other cases, like building aiCPs, or AI-driven customer profiles, that help revenue teams identify the exegraphics behind their best customers and find other accounts that share those traits and fit their ideal customer profile.

Short version? AI that uses an LLM can make sense of data scraped from the web, including up-to-date information about what’s happening with millions of companies, then analyze it to understand how those companies are executing their mission. It can compare this to how your current best customers are running their business, in order to provide real-time insights into the accounts that you should be targeting. 

 

It’s a sorting problem for revenue teams

The headline-grabbing generative AI used by chatbots relies on, essentially, solving search problems. They are a natural extension of what Google does today, where you ask a question and expect even just one good result.

In B2B, targeting is a different search problem: you want AI not to find you just one result, but to find all the results and then stack rank them in terms of how good a fit they are for what you’re trying to sell. Oh, without missing any, and without diluting the results with poor-quality targets.

In short, revenue teams require AI capable of solving sorting problems in addition to search problems.

To solve those problems accurately requires the right data, normalized in a way that an automated process can digest it. And it has to be up to date. These are significant challenges for LLMs. And LLMs are neither cheap nor easy to create; a company is not going to rebuild LLMs every day to account for new data.

This is why not all AI is created equal, and revenue teams in particular have to be selective in what will create not only fast content, but the right content. The best-fitting AI tools can identify the right information and assess relevant context around the organizations you should be selling to.

 

Final thoughts: Presentation matters

Let’s face it: the accuracy of AI chatbots is kind of a novelty. It’s fun to see what responses we get, but we’re all too used to finding the right answers on Google to be wowed by, essentially, an impressive search function.

We’re much more moved by the ability of AI to respond like a human in real time—faster than any person could—and sometimes even better. The ability to synthesize information, to comb those billions of data sources and come up with answers that come across more eloquently than any of us ever sounded in a job interview (or a prospecting email), is why revenue teams are so intrigued by technology like ChatGPT.

Presentation matters. No one would let AI write prospecting emails if it talked like a robot. But in the end, substance matters more than presentation. AI saves revenue teams time and resources, no doubt. But relying on the best-fit AI, AI that produces accurate results on B2B prospects, will be the real differentiator for revenue teams in this new landscape.

Layering exegraphics and intent data to up your game (and your returns)

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RevOps teams are justifiably driven to incorporate intent data in their prioritization strategies. Which makes perfect sense: In the world of demand gen and cold outreach, a prospect who has voluntarily expressed interest in a solution your company offers is way more likely to buy than someone who hasn’t. Intent data offers much better predictive capabilities than standard firmographic filters (like industry, headcount, location or revenue).

Intent data is powerful. There’s no doubt about it. However, it may not be giving you the full spread of information you need to maximize your conversions. For example, intent data can overemphasize “window shoppers,” lookie-loos who are only checking things out because they cost little to nothing.

Sure, a prospect downloaded a white paper or attended a webinar in exchange for a live email address, but those actions could be lightweight indicators of actual readiness. Typically, 66% or more of prospects on a normal, unfiltered intent list are such window shoppers—not the hot prospects you’re most likely to land a meeting with.

But when you pair intent data with exegraphics? Now, you’re unlocking the real potential of both data sets to optimize your sales pipeline.

 

How exegraphics differ from intent

Exegraphics and intent data offer essentially a macro- and a micro-view of a potential customer. Intent signals reflect individual actions that indicate some amount of willingness to engage with your company’s offerings. Exegraphics are demand signals: they reveal the inner workings of companies and how they execute their mission.

An exegraphic is essentially any characteristic you would want to know about a company—even if that information is not readily accessible. The B2C giants have been in on this concept for years with psychographics that extend well beyond demographics: the large data attractors (think Amazon or Google) can predict what you’ll want to buy, as an individual consumer, before you know it yourself. Exegraphics offer similar insights for the B2B world.

AI-driven exegraphics look at companies two ways: One is a focus on a company’s position in its industry and the value it offers to its market. The other focuses on the functions of people within the company, and how those functions are built, sized and prioritized. Rather than create static data points, exegraphics also account for trends and change over time.

Here’s one way to think of it: Intent data reflects small-sample-size data points where a prospect has engaged with your company in some lightweight way. Going after those prospects on that data point alone is like fishing based on where you see a ripple on the water. You know at least one fish is swimming there, and if it’s hungry, it might bite.

Exegraphic data, on the other hand, goes deeper than surface-level interactions to understand broader behaviors and patterns. In the fishing metaphor, you’d have a working knowledge of where schools of fish travel in the lake during different seasons and times of day. You’d know what they like to eat and when they’re most active. You’re not chasing ripples; you’re casting a lure where you know it’s most likely to land a hungry fish.

 

Combining forces to focus your sales strategy

Now you could argue that the best way to fish is both to understand the deeper behavioral patterns, and to look for the ripples that signal a live one. We agree.

Every prospect can potentially exhibit both intent signals and demand signals, as in this case: 

If you’ve already implemented an intent data provider’s system to capture the potential desires of individual prospects, great: keep using it. Alongside that, Rev can identify the exegraphics that your best customers share. We use millions of behavioral data points from thousands of companies to understand what characteristics underlie your best-fit prospects’ needs and create an aiCP (an AI-supported ideal customer profile) to build you a prospect pipeline from the companies with the top “Rev Scores.”

Layering your existing intent data atop the aiCP offers even clearer direction for your sales and marketing strategies, combining the fish’s behavior with the ripples atop the water.

This matrix describes four primary scenarios for combining exegraphics and intent data:

Next wave: High Rev Score + low intent score

These target companies demonstrate the right heavyweight behaviors to match your aiCP. They act like your current best customers on the inside, and for those reasons they are highly likely to have a need for your product or service—even if they don’t know it yet, or haven’t acted on it yet.

Your strategy: Nurture these next-wave prospects.

 These companies are ripe for a higher-volume nurture campaign. They may not be fully aware of a looming pain point, or that your company offers solutions for it. So, start creating those relationships. At the same time, you can monitor these prospects for intent signals—any way they are responding to your nurture campaign or seeking more information, which could bump them into the “hot prospects” category below.

 

Window shoppers: Low Rev Score + high intent score

We mentioned window shoppers above. These prospects are often false positives. They demonstrate interest or curiosity, but the underlying exegraphics reveal they may not be a likely best fit because they don’t share many similarities with your best or ideal customers.

Your strategy: Delegate and deprioritize.

These prospects’ high-intent scores come at a low cost to them (often nothing more than offering an email address). The good thing is, interacting with them can remain a low-cost proposition for you, too. Don’t ignore them, but don’t expend time and resources on them, either. You can route them to automated marketing campaigns until they demonstrate a more serious interest.

 

Non-prospects: Low Rev Score + low intent score

Odds are, your product isn’t useful to everyone out there. These companies have not shown significant interest in your product, and their exegraphics don’t demonstrate much likelihood that they ever will.

Your strategy: Simply ignore them.

Sometimes, you might want to think non-prospects are an untapped market. Most often, they’re not worth your time. The ROI on marketing to these companies would be minuscule, and odds are they’d be unsatisfied customers anyway. Unless these companies start to demonstrate some interest or radically evolve closer to your ideal customer, just don’t even bother.

 

Hot prospects: High Rev Score + high intent score

These are the golden-ticket prospects. The holy grails. The unicorns. Not only do they look and act like your ideal customers, but they’re also demonstrating a readiness to engage and buy. Do we really need to explain why you should call these companies right now?

Your strategy: Go for it! Route them to your sales team for immediate action.

 

Final thought: Exegraphics and intent data are more powerful together

Of course we believe that exegraphics are the most powerful tool for any RevOps leader. We know of no more comprehensive way to understand what makes your best customers tick, and to identify your true ideal customer profile.

Yet there is no denying that intent data augments the precision and strength of exegraphics. With exegraphics alone, absent intent data, your sales team knows they might have to spend time selling the idea before selling the product. But knowing which prospects function much like your existing success cases and which ones are already looking at the solutions your team offers?

Well, we can’t promise the trout will jump right in your boat. That’s no fun. But with exegraphics and intent data playing together, your sales team can focus its efforts on the greatest likelihoods of landing satisfied customers.

Ready for a free list of target accounts that have the exegraphics you care about most? Contact us.

Using RevOps to drive growth at scale, with HubSpot’s Sid Kumar

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Yes, RevOps is all about optimizing revenue—but Sid Kumar understands that RevOps reaches that goal best when it views its function in other terms.

“RevOps is the realization that go-to-market functions that cut across the customer journey need to be working holistically and collaboratively across the customer journey,” he says.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Sid, HubSpot’s SVP of RevOps, has been working within the function nearly since the beginning. A decade ago, he got into RevOps at CA Technologies as it was trying to pivot from enterprise to SMB and mid-market—without a go-to-market-model.

Yet he helped build out a global digital sales organization by focusing not on revenue per se, but on the customer journey. What is the customer journey? Where do we intersperse digital and human touch points? How do we make them both enriching for the customer and part of an efficient and high-scale model?

After this first iteration of RevOps, Sid joined AWS. There, he worked to build out and scale the cloud sales centers and go-to-market model, and led the field sales operations organization.

Now with HubSpot Sid leads RevOps for functional go-to-market teams, aligning marketing, sales and customer success across the customer journey.

“RevOps is the connective tissue,” Sid says.

During a virtual event with Rev, Sid discussed ways to understand and build the RevOps function for scaling organizations (and those on the verge of scaling). His insights into a holistic, collaborative role for RevOps alongside its partner functions focus on driving sustained, effective, long-term growth for revenue teams.

 

Wherever you’re starting from—invest in data 

Data is, essentially, the food for an organization’s operations. Sales, marketing, success: they all thrive on data. RevOps is at least as data-hungry as any of its partners. “Productivity for the RevOps org and the broader org is underpinned by your investments in data and systems,” Sid says.

Yet he finds that critical decisions about data often get made later rather than earlier in an organization’s maturity.

“Even if they are going to evolve, some of these decisions are better made early on so you can start building a platform that can continue to scale and grow,” he says.

So wherever an organization is on its growth journey when it chooses to implement (or ramp up) RevOps, investing in quality, scalable data systems is essential. Think about what your data architecture is, how you’re going to store it, what your warehouse strategy looks like, what your go-to-market hierarchies are.

These are high-impact, if still high-difficulty, investments.

“The smarter and more intelligent you can be about which customers you’re going after and in what priority you’re going after them, you can drive a lot of that automation through systems,” Sid says.

“It goes back to rep productivity and customer experience. Data and systems together, when optimized, can really move the needle on rep productivity, keep them in front of customers and partners, and deliver that seamless customer experience so customers don’t experience all the internal handoffs.”

 

Think of RevOps as a business partnership—not a back-end function

Effective data helps achieve repeatability in your systems; RevOps evaluates how to scale it. Without RevOps, silos can form during growth because each team increasingly has to take care of its own responsibilities—which is why Sid views RevOps as essentially a go-to-market COO, coordinating between teams.

“It’s a business partnership, instead of a back-office function that’s providing reporting,” he says. “RevOps is going to help your GM, your heads of sales and marketing and customer success, to see around corners and play devil’s advocate.”

For the leaders of those teams, this relationship will mean giving up certain controls (or at least feeling that way). Which is why so much of implementing RevOps is establishing mutual understanding and trust.

“You’re not always going to be on the same page,” Sid says. “But if there’s an understanding that you’re all in a partnership to help each other succeed, and you have your company’s and your customer’s best interests in mind, then that partnership tends to blossom.”

For all the functions, this relationship can become a tell me what I’m not thinking of asset. RevOps will naturally come at issues from a data-driven perspective, and the relationship can couple that quantitative assessment with what’s happening experientially on the ground with customers, partners and other stakeholders.

 

RevOps requires its own heartbeat—distinct from other functions

In such a partnership, RevOps needs the autonomy to make decisions from that collaborative place—not just to help the other teams make their decisions. One of the pits companies fall into is thinking that RevOps is a glorified extension of the other function—taking a sales function, say, giving it a RevOps crown, and pretending that RevOps will expand and advance the sales function.

A true RevOps function has that separation of ownership from its peers in the organization. “If you’re a truly co-operating partner with your business partner, it’s two in a box,” Sid says. “Versus a relationship of here’s what I need, please get it to me.”

In other words, RevOps needs to own the responsibility for the entire customer journey—uncoupling its decisions from what’s best for sales or marketing alone to account for the bigger picture. Allowing for that can be tough! But it’s necessary for fully leveraging the potential for a RevOps team.

And some tension is expected—even helpful. “There should be this healthy constructive tension,” Sid says, “so that you’re getting the best outcome for your customers as the ultimate objective, solved for the company holistically.”

 

The customer journey drives alignment—find your North Stars

There’s a reason companies traditionally have distinct sales, marketing and customer success teams: owning the entire customer journey is a lot. The concept of an overarching RevOps function is still pretty nascent, and it’s easy to get caught up in trying to accomplish everything at once.

So Sid recommends going straight for alignment, which all the functions can appreciate with or without RevOps.

“I find the way to do that is getting clear on what your company’s customer journey looks like,” he says. “What are the stages? What are the North Stars along the way? What defines success at every one of those stages?”

It’s less important that each function understands its own stages, stars and successes—and more important for the functions to understand how each other looks at the business. Are all the functions together delivering the experience to the customer that they intend to provide?

 “Having that mutual understanding of how each function operates, and how the other functions can help each other, opens up a different level of dialogue,” Sid says. “You start thinking about it more horizontally than in functions. There’s always going to be the level of functional depth that’s only relevant to marketing or sales, but identifying that common layer that binds all these groups together? That’s how you row the boat in the same direction.” 

Final thoughts: RevOps is a long road—so start with immediate gains

Because RevOps done well interacts so comprehensively with the entire customer journey, it also requires time to bear fruit. It’s not a function that, once implemented, can crank out results in mere weeks. Some areas, like data systems, are most definitely longer-term investments than others.

Sid holds that organizations should be able to notice and measure RevOps’ impact in six-month increments, and that starting with the most pressing pain points will lead to the greatest transformations in the first six months.

“In six months you can really ideate what the biggest pain points are, and collaborate on a V1 solution,” Sid says. “This is typically a thorny area of the business that hasn’t been tackled before. From there you continue iterating on that and getting smarter over time.”

On that process side, there’s usually plenty of low-hanging fruit to get started with. On the people side, clarification of swim lanes—roles and responsibilities—is usually an effective place to begin. There, Sid sees that RevOps can make significant difference in a much shorter time, while simultaneously making those longer-term investments in data systems and the like.

The key, though, is identifying those main pain points particular to your organization. “What are the two to three big rocks that the company is struggling with?” Sid asks. “Go after one of those. You start to develop trust and credibility, and you pick up another rock when you have the bandwidth. It will snowball on itself.”

27 RevOps best practices for driving revenue growth

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Do you remember? Before Revenue Operations (RevOps) became an emerging function in the B2B world, things could get… confusing.

Marketing, sales, finance and customer success operated in silos; each using their own databases with their own set of metrics, chasing their own goals and then wondering why their numbers didn’t align at the end of the quarter. 

It’s no wonder why a recent report from the Boston Consulting Group found that companies with a RevOps team experienced a 100-200% increase in ROI on digital marketing initiatives and a 10-20% increase in sales productivity!

Of course, building a revenue operations team is only the first step. The real key to accessing the benefits of RevOps is in the execution—and that means knowing and implementing best practices.

In this blog post, we’re going to give you an overview of 27 RevOps best practices that can help drive growth for B2B companies. But first, let’s start with a quick definition of RevOps and the core goals that each of those practices supports.

 

RevOps definition and goals

RevOps is the savior for B2B companies struggling with siloed departments and disjointed revenue-driving efforts. It brings together all the functions that touch revenue—marketing, sales, customer success and finance—and aligns them towards a shared goal: driving revenue growth.

But RevOps isn’t just about bringing departments together. The goals of RevOps teams also include the following:

  • Improving processes and systems to remove inefficiencies that lead to missed revenue opportunities
  • Determining key metrics and tracking the effectiveness of strategies in reaching revenue goals
  • Implementing strategies to increase the flow of high-quality leads and improve conversion rates
  • Working closely with the marketing and sales teams to align messaging, target the right accounts and drive pipeline growth
  • Analyzing data and customer insights to improve customer retention rates and lifetime value
  • Leveraging and efficiently implementing an efficient tech stack that improves all revenue-generating processes, eliminates redundant work and maximizes ROI

With these goals in mind, let’s now look at the specific practices your RevOps team can follow to achieve them.

 

27 revenue operations best practices for driving revenue growth

27 practices might be a lot to remember. So, rather than trying to implement everything at once, see this list as a handy reference to come back to as your company’s RevOps journey unfolds.

 

Best practices for aligning GTM teams to drive growth

  1. Conduct regular check-ins with GTM teams to ensure that no silos exist within the organization and all teams are working towards achieving the same targets. Address any roadblocks that may be hindering progress.
  2. Implement the use of a unified platform (e.g., CRM, marketing automation platform or data warehouse) for data tracking and analysis so that all teams can easily access the same key performance indicators and data points.
  3. Focus on building strong relationships with all teams involved in the revenue process, including sales, marketing, customer success, product, finance and executive leadership. These relationships will help you drive alignment and buy-in for your RevOps strategies.

 

Best practices for setting realistic and achievable revenue goals

  1. Define success metrics and align them with overall company objectives. Key metrics include customer lifetime value, customer churn, sales pipeline velocity and customer acquisition cost. Communicate to each team how they contribute to these metrics and how they can improve them.
  2. Set revenue targets based on data and analysis, not just gut feelings or guesses. Use historical performance data to inform sales forecasting. For example, look at revenue growth over time, sales cycle length and average deal size.
  3. Break down revenue goals into specific targets for each team and individual, including specific activities and metrics. This helps ensure alignment and accountability toward the overall revenue goal.
  4. Continuously analyze data to track progress towards revenue goals and make adjustments as market conditions change or the company strategy shifts. This will ensure that the RevOps goals stay aligned with the overall business strategy and goals.

 

Best practices for improving processes and systems to eliminate inefficiencies 

  1. Adopt automation software to streamline processes, improve data accuracy, and drive efficiency in your revenue operations. For example, implementing a data management platform can help ensure consistency and accuracy in your revenue data.
  2. Stay organized with clear documentation of processes, roles and responsibilities for the GTM teams. This will ensure smooth handoffs between teams, improve communication and encourage collaboration.
  3. Align sales and marketing processes to avoid duplication of efforts and ensure a cohesive end-to-end customer experience. For example, you may need to align qualification criteria for marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs).
  4. Routinely review and adjust processes in response to changes in the market and within your organization.

 

Best practices to increase flow and conversion of high-quality leads

  1. Study the exegraphics of your best customers to learn what characteristics your ideal customers display when showing signs of being ready to buy. If you’re unfamiliar with exegraphics, check out this article for a quick crash course.
  2. Use exegraphics to refine your ideal customer profile (ICP) to prevent pursuing accounts unlikely to convert and stop missing out on high-fit accounts that you hadn’t previously considered. Rev’s Sales Development Platform uses AI technology to automate this process and optimize lead targeting.
  3. Implement a lead scoring system to prioritize leads based on their fit and purchase readiness. For example, Rev’s platform gives each of your leads a “Rev Score” to help you prioritize and focus your marketing and sales efforts.
  4. Ensure sales and marketing teams are aligned and working towards common goals, so that leads get effectively passed from one team to the other. The process should include clear handoff points and communication channels to ensure leads aren’t lost in the transition.

 

Best practices for sales pipeline growth and management

  1. Use data to optimize and refine your sales process continually. Look at key metrics such as conversion rates, average deal size, and time-to-close to identify any bottlenecks or areas for improvement in your sales process.
  2. Build and maintain a robust CRM system, ensuring that all relevant data is accurately captured and easily accessible to sales teams. You’ll also want to ensure you have processes for regular cleansing and updating of your CRM data.
  3. Regularly review and update your ideal customer profile to ensure your messaging and sales efforts target the right prospects. Use the exegraphic data on your best customers to inform and update your messaging and targeting.
  4. Allocate resources to ensure that the sales team is adequately equipped and focused on high-priority opportunities. This includes creating a robust sales enablement program, regularly analyzing pipeline and performance data, and adjusting the team’s account assignments as needed.
  5. Implement strategies for increasing the average revenue per customer through upselling, cross-selling and developing more effective pricing strategies. You might also consider expanding into new market segments or introducing additional product offerings.

 

Best practices for improving customer retention

  1. Develop a thorough understanding of the customer journey and identify touchpoints where the customer success team can improve customer experience and satisfaction.
  2. Leverage customer success and support teams to gather insights on how customers use your product and what pain points they experience. Use what you learn to inform product development and help your sales team effectively demonstrate the value and ROI of your solution during the sales process.
  3. Implement a customer success strategy, including streamlining communication channels for support inquiries and feedback, automating onboarding processes, and proactively reaching out to check in on customers.
  4. Create processes for regularly collecting and analyzing customer feedback. Use that information to inform product optimizations and drive retention efforts.

 

Best practices for optimizing the RevOps tech stack

  1. Continuously assess and evaluate current technology tools and identify gaps in functionality or areas for improvement. When possible, prioritize integrating and consolidating tools for maximum efficiency.
  2. Ensure data integrity by regularly auditing data sources and implementing processes for data hygiene, including data enrichment and de-duplication.
  3. Stay up-to-date on the latest technology innovations and developments in the RevOps space. Consider implementing new solutions as appropriate.

 

Final thoughts

RevOps is a relatively new field, but its combination of data analysis, cross-functional collaboration and strategic planning can have a significant impact on driving revenue growth for B2B companies. By implementing these best practices, RevOps professionals can effectively lead their teams to success.

Want to give your RevOps team an advantage in identifying high-quality leads and closing more deals? Let Rev’s AI-powered platform show you the companies you should target next!

Marketing qualified lead: What is it really?

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Companies can’t survive without customers. And every customer is a “converted” lead. But, not all leads will convert. Some may not fit your ideal customer profile and others may not be ready to buy. That’s where marketing qualified leads, or MQLs, come into play. 

You might be asking, “What exactly is an MQL?” “How do you identify an MQL?” and “Why do MQLs matter?” 

This blog post covers all you need to know about MQLs—from definitions to strategies for converting leads into paying customers. You’ll also learn how MQLs compare to sales qualified leads, (SQLs) and how they work together in the sales funnel.

So, without further ado, let’s dive in.

 

What is a marketing qualified lead (MQL)?

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a person or organization that has expressed interest in your company’s product or services. MQLs are leads your marketing team has identified as having the potential to become customers. 

In other words, MQLs are leads that have met specific criteria that indicate that the leads are more likely to move further down the sales funnel.

These criteria can be based on a variety of factors, including

  • Website interactions: How often does the lead view your website? Are they clicking on CTAs or downloading content? 
  • Paid advertising: Are they responding to your paid ads? Are they clicking through or engaging with them? 
  • Content engagement: Are they interacting with content such as emails, blog posts or e-books?
  • Social media engagement: Are they engaging with your social media accounts? Are they sharing posts and commenting? 

Because MQLs have already taken actions that signal they are likely to become customers, they are more valuable to your business. These marketing qualified leads are likely to become sales-qualified leads (SQLs). And with that confidence, you can prioritize them over other leads—saving you time, money and resources in closing pipeline. 

 

Marketing qualified lead (MQL) vs. sales qualified lead (SQL)

Now that you know what MQLs are, let’s look at how they differ from sales qualified leads (SQLs).

As the name implies, sales qualified leads are leads that the sales team has deemed worth pursuing. These leads have shown enough interest in your product or service to make it worthwhile to engage them further in the sales process. 

The main difference between MQLs and SQLs is which team sourced them. MQLs are identified by the marketing team, and SQLs are qualified by the sales team. 

While MQLs have the potential to convert into customers, they still need to enter the sales funnel. But, this is not the case with SQLs. SQLs are already in the sales funnel and are ready for sales to engage further.

 

How a lead becomes an MQL

MQLs have specific attributes that differentiate them from other leads, and much of it can be tracked and measured. 

Some examples of MQL common behavior include:

  1. Regularly visiting your website: MQLs will consistently visit your website, view content and explore different pages.
  2. Completion of web forms: MQLs are likely to fill out web forms, to get more information or request a product demo.
  3. Interacting with online ads: This may involve clicking on ads or engaging with sponsored content. Most MQLs will have interacted with at least one of your online ads.
  4. Downloading content from your website: MQLs will likely have downloaded content from your websites, such as e-books, white papers, case studies and other valuable information.
  5. Requesting more information or demos: MQLs have taken the initiative to request more information about your product or service and may even ask for a demonstration.
  6. Signing up for emails: MQLs will have signed up for emails and newsletters to receive ongoing updates about your product or service.
  7. Engaging with social media posts: MQLs tend to engage with posts and content by liking or commenting.
  8. Subscribing to newsletters: MQLs may also have subscribed to newsletters and other email campaigns to stay up-to-date on your product or service.
  9. Attending webinars and other events: This involves MQLs taking the extra step of attending webinars and other events to get more information about your product or service.

But in order for a lead to become an MQL, they don’t need to engage in ALL of the trackable activities. In fact, that’s why it’s important for sales and marketing teams to align on lead scoring and how to weight engagements. 

Lead scoring is a process that assigns values to leads based on their interactions with your company. This helps you see which leads are more likely to convert and should be given more attention.

To score a lead, assign a point value to each interaction with your website, ads, content and other digital assets. This helps to determine the worthiness of each lead.

 

High quality vs. low quality MQL

You might be wondering why we’re calling out high vs. low quality MQLs, especially when we just said that all MQLs had to meet a specific threshold in order to become “qualified.” The truth is, lead scoring optimizes for the lowest common denominator. So yes, high and low quality leads get bucketed—equally—as MQLs.

But they’re not equal, really.

Both hit minimum criteria. High quality MQLs, however, are more likely to engage. They have a higher closing and revenue potential and are further along in the buyer’s journey. Low quality MQLs showed just enough interest, but may require a bit more nurturing and time before they’ll be ready to move to the next stage.

Lead nurturing is essential, for both high and low quality MQLs. But right out of the gate, it’s even more important to identify low-fit from high-fit leads. The faster a high-fit lead can be identified, the faster you can book revenue.

 

How sales and marketing can increase their pool of high-fit leads

All revenue teams—sales and marketing, specifically—need to have a unified strategy in place to bring in high-fit leads. The strategy needs to start at the most fundamental level: the ICP. Understanding who your ICP really is at the deepest level, the exegraphic level, will help revenue teams target and engage with accounts that have the characteristics they care about most. 

After all, when you engage with the wrong account, every step after is wasted.

Don’t be that team.

At Rev, we help revenue teams understand their ICP, and we find and prioritize other high-fit accounts that look just like them. Curious to know what your ICP really looks like so your demand gen team can run a stronger campaign and your SDRs can be more efficient in their outreach? Contact us for your free ICP audit.