Successful companies grow fast by moving users swiftly through their pipeline. In an ever-evolving market, this requires frequent fresh approaches to revenue generation.  One method of supercharging growth (and used to success by companies like Slack and Candidly) is product-led growth (PLG). And with the impact of PLG on user adoption, customer satisfaction and revenue growth, it’s no wonder the B2B tech world lapping it up. 

PLG emphasizes a user-centric approach. It prizes organic growth, fosters lower customer acquisition costs and focuses on faster time to value realization for customers. This data-driven iteration on business growth can offer your organization the benefits of scalability, global reach and industry validation—if you can adopt it effectively and it’s a good fit for your company. 

Let’s find out if product-led growth is right for the next edition of your B2B RevOps playbook. 

Sections: 

• What is product-led growth? 
• Who’s doing it right? 
• What are the benefits? 
• What are the pillars? 
• Is it right for my company? 
• What’s the future of PLG? 

Let’s get started!

 

What is PLG? 

Unlike market-led growth, product-led growth uses the product itself to drive acquisition, expansion, conversion and retention. The product is designed to be intuitive, user-friendly, and capable of delivering value to customers, requiring fewer sales or marketing efforts. Customers should move through the sales funnel almost without even knowing it. They gain hands-on practice with your product or service and get hooked at the outset. 

Key elements of PLG include providing a free or trial version of your product that allows users to experience its value before making a purchase. The product is designed to be self-serve, so users can easily sign up, onboard, and start using it without the need for extensive training.

PLG relies on the concept of product virality, where satisfied users naturally share their positive experiences with others. This leads to organic growth and increased adoption. Additionally, PLG emphasizes gathering user feedback and data to continuously improve the product and drive customer satisfaction.

By prioritizing the product and user experience, companies adopting a PLG strategy aim to drive customer acquisition, retention and expansion. And the best part, it does it all while minimizing the need for traditional sales and marketing techniques.

 

Who’s doing it right? 

As it becomes more popular, especially in tech, we see several companies successfully embracing a PLG strategy. Here’s what they’re doing right:

• Slack: The popular collaboration platform has grown through a PLG approach. It offers a freemium model, allowing users to sign up and use the product for free with limited features. As teams adopt and use Slack, they often invite more users, contributing to the platform’s viral growth.
• Dropbox: This cloud storage and file sharing service utilized a PLG strategy to achieve significant growth. By offering a free version of their product with a limited amount of storage, Dropbox attracted millions of users. Those user then shared files and invited others to join, driving growth.
• Atlassian: A software company that offers a range of collaboration and development tools, including Jira, Confluence and Trello, Atlassian has embraced a PLG approach by providing free versions of their products, allowing users to try them out and upgrade as their needs expand.
• Zoom: The video conferencing platform experienced exponential growth, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. It offers a freemium model with limited meeting durations for free users, allowing individuals and businesses to experience the platform’s capabilities and subsequently upgrade to paid plans for more features and longer meetings.

 

These companies have a product that solves their users’ problems. They offer limited versions of their solution, incentivize usage and enable sharing right in the product and watch their loyal customer base expand with almost no lift from their marketing orgs (or their budgets). These companies demonstrate how a PLG strategy attracts, retains, and essentially clones customers by focusing on delivering value through products and facilitating organic growth through user adoption and advocacy.

 

What are the benefits of PLG? 

PLG offers several benefits for businesses. Key advantages include customer satisfaction, reduced sales and marketing costs, faster user adoption, viral growth and network effects, data-enabled iteration, upsell and expansion opportunities, and differentiation from competitors in an already volatile market. Whew! PLG is about as close to a secret weapon as you can get. It offers the potential for scalable and sustainable growth by aligning business success to customer success, reducing friction in the user journey, and leveraging the viral nature of happy customers.

 

What are the pillars of PLG?

The three pillars of PLG are as follows: 

1. Design for the converted user
2. Deliver value before they seek it out
3. Investment

 

Pillar 1: Designing for the converted User

With PLG, we immediately put the customer in the driver’s seat of the product. They should find their problem solved as soon as they use the product. The converted user, then, refers to the practice of optimizing the product experience and features to cater to users who have already upgraded from free or trial versions to paid plans or higher tiers of the product. These users have already experienced the value of the product and have made a commitment to continue using it. The first pillar of PLG is designing for the converted user. When designing for the converted user, the focus shifts from initial user onboarding to deepening the engagement and maximizing the value for these users. 

A few key considerations to make in the process of designing for the converted user:

1. Advanced features and functionality: Converted users often have more advanced needs and are willing to explore the full capabilities of the product. Designing and enhancing features specifically targeting their requirements can help increase their satisfaction. It’s also a great way to ensure they continue to derive value from the product.
2. Customization and personalization: Providing options for customization and personalization allows converted users to tailor the product to their specific workflows and preferences. This flexibility enhances the user experience and further integrates the product into their daily operations.
3. Power user tools and efficiency enhancements: For converted users who are actively using the product, incorporating power user tools and efficiency enhancements can boost productivity and streamline their workflows. This can include advanced automation features, shortcuts, integrations with other tools, or advanced reporting and analytics capabilities.
4. Proactive support and customer success: Designing for converted users involves providing proactive support and customer success initiatives. This can include personalized guidance, targeted resources, and proactive communication to help users achieve their desired outcomes and address any challenges they may encounter.
5. Expansion opportunities and cross-selling: Designing for converted users also involves identifying expansion opportunities within the existing user base. This can include introducing additional features or modules that align with their evolving needs, cross-selling complementary products or services, or providing seamless pathways for users to upgrade to higher tiers.

 

Pillar 2: Delivering value before they seek it 

With PLG, the customer gains instant gratification from using the product and solving their problem immediately. This is often done through a demo or free trial. They don’t have to seek the value out of the product because their issue is solved on the spot. Delivering value before the customer seeks it, then, refers to the concept of proactively providing a solution to users even before they explicitly express their needs. 

The goal here is to anticipate and address user needs in a way that creates a positive user experience and builds a foundation for customer success. This approach is rooted in the idea that a product should be designed to intuitively meet user needs and deliver value from the moment they start using it. This includes intuitive onboarding, default settings and presets, proactive suggestions and recommendations, automated workflows, and contextual help and support. 

The idea behind delivering value before customers seek it is to exceed their expectations, make their experience as frictionless as possible, and demonstrate the product’s value proposition from the start. By providing value upfront, businesses can increase user satisfaction, encourage adoption and engagement, and lay the foundation for long-term customer success.

 

Pillar 3: Investment

Introducing the customer to success before they’re handed off to Sales makes them more inclined to buy. The funnel should lead directly to product usage, not a salesperson, earning the customer’s investment seemingly before they know it. The goal is to provide a self-serve experience that empowers users to achieve their desired outcomes independently. 

Basics of funnel design
Engagement funnel	Sales funnel
Drives user engagement, interaction and builds relationships with your target audience.  Creates meaningful interactions, increases brand awareness and nurtures potential customers. Captures leads, encourages users to explore your product or content and foster ongoing engagement.  The primary objective may not be immediate sales, but a well-designed engagement funnel can eventually lead to conversions by building trust and loyalty with your audience over time.	Guides users through the customer journey and optimizes conversions. Moves users from initial awareness to making a purchase or completing a desired action.  Involves lead generation, product education, showcasing value propositions, providing persuasive offers and facilitating the actual sales process.  The primary objective is maximizing the conversion rate and driving revenue.

 

Getting the user out of the sales funnel and into the product requires an audit of your funnel structure, as well as implementation of in-product features that foster investment. These may include:

1. Comprehensive onboarding: Design a self-guided onboarding process that helps customers understand and use the product effectively. Provide interactive tutorials, videos, and step-by-step guides that highlight key features and showcase how to achieve specific goals.
2. In-app education and resources: Offer in-app education materials, knowledge bases and help centers that customers can access at any time. These resources should provide answers to frequently asked questions, troubleshooting guides and best practice tips to empower users to overcome challenges independently.
3. Automated success milestones: Define success milestones within the product and track customers’ progress toward those milestones. Celebrate achievements and provide guidance or recommendations for next steps when customers reach certain points in their journey. This helps users feel a sense of accomplishment and motivates them to explore further.
4. Product-embedded analytics: Provide customers with access to product analytics and data that help them understand how they are benefiting from the product. This can include usage statistics, performance metrics and insights into how their actions within the product contribute to their desired outcomes.
5. Proactive communication: Establish automated, in-app messaging or email campaigns to engage customers at various stages of their journey. Send personalized messages to provide tips, feature updates and success stories that showcase the value of the product. This ongoing communication keeps customers informed and engaged, driving their success.
6. Customer community/user forums: Foster a customer community or user forums where customers can connect, share insights, and learn from one another. Encourage engagement and provide a platform for users to ask questions, share best practices and support each other.

 

Is PLG right for my company?

Determining whether PLG is the right strategy for your company involves considering various factors. 

You must assess if your product has the potential to be self-serve and deliver value without extensive sales or marketing efforts. PLG works best when the product itself is intuitive, easy to adopt and provides tangible value to users. Similarly, evaluate if your target market is receptive to self-serve experiences and willing to try and adopt new products without significant assistance. PLG relies on users independently discovering, adopting and expanding their usage of the product.

Consider if your business model supports a freemium or trial-based approach, where users can start with a free version of the product and upgrade to paid plans for additional features or functionality. PLG is often effective when revenue growth comes from expansion within the existing user base.

Does your product have the potential for viral growth, where satisfied users naturally share their positive experiences with others? PLG can be particularly successful when word-of-mouth referrals and network effects contribute to organic user acquisition and adoption.

PLG relies on data-driven insights to iterate on the product, enhance the user experience, and drive customer satisfaction and retention. Determine if your company has the capabilities and processes in place to gather and analyze user data effectively.

PLG also requires a cross-functional collaboration between product, engineering, marketing, customer success and data analytics teams to ensure a cohesive strategy. Evaluate if your company culture, structure, and resources are aligned with a product-led approach. 

Finally, analyze the competitive landscape and market dynamics to understand if a product-led approach would differentiate your company and provide a competitive advantage. Consider if other successful companies in your industry have adopted PLG and if it has yielded positive results for them.

It’s important to note that PLG is not a one-size-fits-all strategy. Its suitability varies based on factors specific to your company and product. Consider conducting market research, customer surveys and analyzing your product-market fit to make an informed decision about adopting a PLG strategy. 

 

What does the future of PLG look like?

Initially popular among startups and SMBs, PLG is now gaining traction in the enterprise market. Companies are adopting PLG strategies to cater to the changing preferences of enterprise buyers who expect intuitive and self-serve experiences. What makes this strategy really exciting is that it continues to change. New PLG trends continue to emerge. 

For example, more companies are adopting free or freemium models as a way to attract users and provide them with a low barrier to entry. This approach allows users to experience the value of the product before committing to a paid plan.

There is an increasing emphasis on leveraging product analytics and user data to make data-driven decisions. Companies are leveraging these insights to improve the product experience, identify user behavior patterns, and drive engagement and conversion.

There is a growing ecosystem of tools and platforms specifically designed to support PLG initiatives. These tools assist with onboarding, user analytics, product tours, in-app messaging and other aspects of the PLG journey.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will play a significant role in powering PLG strategies by enhancing user experiences, enabling data-driven decision-making and automating processes. One application will have AI algorithms analyzing customer data to segment your customer base effectively. By identifying groups with similar characteristics, behaviors or needs, AI helps you target specific segments that are more likely to be receptive to upsell offers. This segmentation enables tailoring upselling strategies and messaging to maximize their effectiveness.

AI can also analyze user data, behavior and preferences to deliver personalized experiences, crucial to successful PLG. By leveraging machine learning algorithms, AI can provide tailored product recommendations, content suggestions and targeted offers to individual users, increasing engagement and conversion rates.

AI can be used to detect churn risk. Yes, churn. It gives companies insight to address customer needs and situations. And with that insight, companies are better equipped to proactively build retention programs. Sometimes those insights and signals lead to upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

And, AI algorithms can analyze user behavior and usage data to identify opportunities for upselling and expansion. By understanding user needs and preferences, AI can suggest relevant upgrades, additional features or higher-tier plans, driving revenue growth and customer satisfaction.

Remember: successful implementation of AI in PLG requires robust data infrastructure, ethical data practices, and ongoing monitoring and optimization. Additionally, AI should complement the human touch and be used to augment the user experience rather than replace it entirely.

 

PLG: Long story short

Remember, optimizing PLG is an iterative process that requires continuous monitoring, experimentation and adaptation. Stay customer-focused, leverage data, and be open to learning and refining your strategies to drive sustainable growth through product-led approaches.

Learn more about how you can optimize PLG with Rev’s AI-powered Sales Development Platform. Schedule a demo with us, and we’ll show you how to identify which of your customers are ready for expansion opportunities—and why.

When companies wait to put customer retention strategies into action until after churn becomes an issue, they essentially write the script for their own demise. Look at once-industry leaders Blockbuster, Kodak and Sears. Each failed to adapt to an evolving market. Almost as quickly as they skyrocketed in popularity, they lost their customers and fell well behind their competitors. While these are B2C examples, we’re all familiar with B2B companies in our industries that are slipping down and to the right. Now, their logos collect dust while churn-savvy companies collect revenue.

At the other end of the spectrum are companies that prioritize customer satisfaction and get ahead of churn before it eats away at their bottom line. Churn-proof your organization and you become, in a word, timeless! Apple and Amazon are prime examples—both surely had growing and retaining a loyal customer base baked into their business strategy from the outset, making the case for early churn prevention and regular churn reduction.

The results are in. Reducing and preventing churn is an absolute must-do for successful, sustainable business growth.

 

Identifying customer churn

Customer churn (aka attrition or turnover) is the amount of customers that stop using a product or service over a period of time. 

High churn rates substantially decrease revenue, but having a strategy in place to act on early can change the odds of tipping the scale too far too fast to recover. A hopeful statistic: According to research from Bain & Company, just 5% increase in customer retention positively impacts profits by 25% to 95%. 

Left unchecked, however, churn will lead to a decline in revenue, lower profits and decreased market share. Identifying the warning signs of churn, then, is critical to sustaining a business. 

Traditional red flags for churn include: decreased engagement, declining usage, customer complaints, late or missed payments, low Net Promoter Score (NPS) and lack of response to outreach. There are quieter signals of churn as well—harder to spot at a glance and, therefore, detrimental to revenue growth. When a company experiences office closings or a reduction in workforce, security concerns, or fail to adapt their product or processes to sudden change (global pandemic, anyone?,) they may start the slow march to annihilation without warning. When the signs of churn are identified too late, it becomes difficult to pinpoint the reasons why your customers are churning, resulting in missed opportunities for improvement. 

Think of your last lost customer. Was the problem poor customer service, lack of perceived value or inconsistent product quality? Did you provide a poor user experience, or was it a lack of communication that drove loyal customers away? Did reducing your workforce to cut costs actually hit the end user where it hurt the most? Having strategies in place to spot and address churn early–before the possible reasons pile up and become impossible to identify (let alone correct) enables companies to remain competitive. 

 

How to reduce churn

Monitoring six touchpoints in your customer experience will help nurture and maintain your customer base. Relationship-building throughout the lifecycle is crucial to reduce churn. Have a strategy that supports customers during: 

1. Onboarding
2. Education
3. Feedback 
4. Product usage
5. Engagement
6. Follow-up

 

Steps to take at each touchpoint are detailed below. 

 

1. Improve your onboarding experience

Your first defense against churn is to help new users quickly and easily learn how to use your product or service, understand its value and achieve their desired outcomes. And remember, keep it simple. Some tactics for doing so include:

• Providing clear and concise instructions
• Creating a personalized approach
• Presenting your value proposition 
• Being interactive and engaging
• Allowing for progress tracking
• Offering ongoing support

 

Another way to optimize user experience and grow a loyal customer base during onboarding is to drive home your company values and beliefs. To do this, you’ll need to first define them. Craft a clear and concise statement that describes what your company stands for and what you want to achieve. Your values should be aligned with your brand and mission.

Next, find ways to incorporate those values into your company culture. This can include hiring practices, employee training and internal communication.

Showcase your values in your messaging. Ensure that they are prominently featured throughout your website, social media and marketing materials. Use language that reflects your values when communicating on behalf of your brand and products or services.

Engaging in social responsibility is another way to show you don’t just talk the talk. Supporting local communities, environmental sustainability and charitable causes that align with your company standards.

Finally, always engage with your customers and stakeholders in ways that reflect your company’s values and beliefs. This can include responding to customer inquiries and feedback in a timely and respectful manner, and showcasing examples of how your company is living its values in the community.

 

2. Educate your customer

Once your customer is onboarded, they need to be educated. Education is typically focused on building relationships and loyalty—critical to reducing churn and retaining your customer base. It builds trust and credibility and increases customer satisfaction. Provide information and resources about the features and benefits of your products or services, model how to use them effectively and reiterate your value proposition while educating your customer. 

 

A mini-guide to instructional content

Expert tip: Use different mediums for customer education. Here are some examples to inspire offers that teach while keeping people engaged.

To illustrate the features and benefits of your products or services, consider creating how-to videos. These videos can show step-by-step instructions on how to use the product, how to solve common problems or how to take advantage of advanced features. 

User manuals and guides can also provide detailed information about a product or service in various formats, such as PDFs or physical books. 

Tutorials and online courses provide structured learning experiences for customers. These can include interactive lessons, quizzes and other tools to help customers master a product or service. 

Webinars and live events offer customers the opportunity to learn from experts and ask questions in real time. These events can cover a wide range of topics, from product updates to industry trends and best practices. 

Additionally, infographics and other visual aids can be made to simplify complex information and make it easier for customers to understand key concepts, compare features or provide other educational information.

Give customers a hands-on experience to teach about what you do in a more interactive way. This can include product demos and/or free trials or samples. 

Take advantage of opportunities on your website to help customers learn. Consider creating an easy-to-find knowledge base: A resource library or frequently asked questions (FAQ) section on your website provides easy access to information about your products or services.

Finally, offer training or workshops. Engage users with in-depth knowledge about your products or services and how to use them to maximum impact.

Educating customers about your products or services is an ongoing process that requires a commitment to clear and effective communication. By educating strategically through multiple mediums, businesses create a broad approach that both attracts new customers and builds strong relationships with existing ones, setting themselves up to knock the main goal out of the park: buh-bye churn! 

 

3. Work the feedback loop

Open lines of communication are key to customer retention. Collecting feedback is essential for understanding how customers feel about your products or services and identifying areas for improvement. Here are some steps you can take to collect feedback and measure satisfaction:

1. Define your goals: Determine what you want to achieve through customer feedback. Are you looking to improve a specific product or service? Do you want to identify customer pain points? Focus your efforts to collect the most relevant feedback.
2. Choose your feedback channels: There are many channels you can use to collect customer feedback, such as surveys, feedback forms, social media, email or in-person interviews. Choose the one(s) most appropriate for your business and audience.
3. Create a feedback survey: Keep it short, easy to understand and ask relevant questions. Use a mix of open-ended and closed-ended questions to gather both qualitative and quantitative data.
4. Analyze the data: Once you have collected feedback, analyze the data to identify patterns and trends. Look for areas where customers are consistently satisfied or dissatisfied and identify opportunities for improvement.
5. Take action: Use the feedback you have collected to make improvements to your products or services. Communicate with your customers about the changes you are making based on their feedback.
6. Track customer satisfaction over time: Regularly measure customer satisfaction over time to track trends and identify areas where you need to make further improvements.

 

By listening to customer feedback and taking action based on their insights, you build stronger relationships and improve the overall customer experience, reducing the risk that they will seek alternative products and services.

 

4. Integrate retention hooks

In-product retention hooks encourage users to return to you. They’re a great way to keep existing customers engaged and reduce churn. 

Think about your favorite products and apps. The ones you keep coming back to. They likely integrate some mix of the following:

• Easy-to-use interface: Simple and user-friendly
• Personalization: Aligned with your preferences, behavior or history
• Gamification: Including points, badges or levels 
• Frequent updates and improvements: A demonstrated commitment to quality and satisfaction
• Social proof: Customer reviews or endorsements that build trust 
• Customer support: Help should be available to those who ask for it
• Exclusivity: Unique benefits or access to a product or service

 

The key to using retention hooks to keep customers engaged and loyal is understanding their needs and preferences. Enhance the effect by continuously evaluating and improving retention strategies to ensure they remain effective in an evolving market.

 

5. Incentivize engagement

Offering a discount, promo, loyalty program, etc. gets customers to stick around. You may want to personalize offers based on a customer’s purchase history to help them feel understood. Provide excellent customer service and promptly address any issues or concerns that customers may have to earn trust and loyalty. Offer exclusive access to products, services or events so they feel valued. Then, regularly communicate with customers through email newsletters, social media or other channels to keep them engaged with the business and aware of new offerings or promotions.

 

6. Follow up, check in, re-engage

Retention emails provide your customer with ongoing value, keep them engaged, reduce churn and increase customer lifetime value. 

Personalized messages to inactive customers are a great way to get feedback on why they aren’t using your product or service and rehook them. 

Retention emails can also be used to encourage active customers to make repeat purchases. For example, businesses can send emails that highlight new or popular products, offer personalized recommendations based on past purchases, or provide special discounts or incentives for repeat purchases.

And don’t forget to check-in with your customer base with product updates and education. Make offers of exclusive content and promotions that are not available to the general public. 

By staying in touch with customers and offering relevant content and promotions businesses increase customer loyalty.

 

How to avoid churn in the first place

Stay ready and you don’t have to get ready, right? This philosophy applies to business beautifully. If you avoid churn in the first place, you don’t have to scramble and spend costly resources (and risk your foothold in your market) attempting to reduce it.

Prevention begins with spotting the deep signals that churn is brewing. Superficial indicators are external or observable factors, often based on actions that customers take or do not take, like decreased engagement, declining usage or customer complaints. Deep indicators of churn, on the other hand, are internal behaviors or traits that may drive customers to abandon a product or service that no longer serves them. In B2B, deep indicators can include changes in team structure or staffing, challenges with scaling, substitution or replacement in key roles, expansion or pivoting to new markets, and more. When a company makes adjustments to the way they operate (adjustments that aren’t apparent in their demographics but impact the behaviors of the organization) churn becomes more and more likely. 

Superficial signals of churn Decreased usage and engagement               Customer complaints Late or missed payments Low NPS Lack of response to outreach

Deep signals of churn Changing needs External impacts on internal business structure Product or service mismatch Competitive pressures Scaling or expanding challenges

 

Deep factors are difficult to observe directly, but not impossible. In fact, keeping tabs on your customers’ deep signals may save your business from going the way of the dinosaurs. 

 

Behave like a churn-proof company

Only by focusing on both superficial and deep indicators of churn can businesses develop a most comprehensive understanding of customer behavior and take targeted actions to increase retention and loyalty. 

And those deep signals of churn are only revealed to those with a handle on exegraphic data. Exegraphics are the quiet and early signals of your customers behavior. Understanding exegraphics—insights into how companies operate, like their investment level in customer care for example—makes swift and early intervention possible. 

Exegraphics are your churn-proofing magic wand. 

Mitigate future turbulence with retention. Preserve and protect your existing revenue stream with the pattern-predicting power of exegraphic data plugged into Rev’s Sales Development Platform. Want to see the exegraphics behind your best customers—and the ones churning? Contact us, and we’ll show you.

Revenue Operations (RevOps) is a breakthrough application of data and automation. It’s gaining in popularity across all industries—and for good reason. 

Winning organizations break down silos and optimize the flow of work across sales, marketing and customer success teams. RevOps has emerged as their key to achieving this enormous effort. In fact, According to Gartner, 75% of high-growth companies will have a RevOps model within the next two years. With a focus on alignment and collaboration, a RevOps framework reduces costs, improves customer experience and accomplishes the ever elusive goal of consistent, sustainable revenue growth. 

In short, RevOps is the intersection of data-driven and customer-centric revenue generation. Leaders who understand and are able to implement a RevOps framework realize their company’s revenue goals through integration of processes, data and technologies across teams. 

 

The benefits of RevOps

Streamlined processes across key teams with improved data analysis and automation deliver powerful, actionable insights into customer behavior, helping organizations find and tap new revenue streams. 

Benefits of RevOps include: 

• Improved collaboration
• A unified approach to revenue generation
• Reduced inefficiencies
• Increased productivity
• Customer satisfaction
• Accountability

 

A RevOps framework enables organizations to crush revenue goals, increase customer retention and improve overall business performance.

 

The elements of a RevOps framework

Every RevOps framework contains four key elements: People, processes, technology and data. 

People are the core of every revenue operations team. From leaders to specialists, all are responsible for implementing a RevOps framework. They should be able to develop and execute a cohesive strategy that aligns with the company’s overall goals and objectives.

Developing and refining processes across all revenue-related functions will increase efficiency and effectiveness. In RevOps, these processes belong to different departments, often including sales, marketing and customer success. 

Advancements in technology have produced sophisticated RevOps software. Use it! Your tech should help you exchange data, segment your audience and/or automate workflows. Integrating various technologies such as CRM, marketing automation, and customer success tools will streamline and optimize revenue operations.

Finally, being able to collect and analyze data is critical to making informed decisions under a RevOps framework. RevOps relies on key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics that track revenue growth, customer acquisition and retention.

Waterfall vs. agile models

Project management methodologies waterfall and agile can be applied to RevOps frameworks, Waterfall being a traditional, sequential approach and agile being the more iterative approach involving continuous collaboration, adaptation and improvement. 

The time-saving advantages and emphasis on collaboration may make agile a good fit for your RevOps framework, although ultimately, the choice of framework will depend on the specific needs and requirements of your organization, as well as industry, size and revenue goals.

 

The different frameworks

Several RevOps frameworks have emerged recently, each with its own approach to optimizing revenue-generating functions within an organization. 

The Clari RevOps framework, for example, is a waterfall model that helps GTM teams take control. It focuses on four key pillars: revenue process optimization, connected intelligence, dynamic forecasting and collaborative execution. The Clari RevOps framework also includes a set of best practices, tools and technologies to help organizations implement their strategy, including data management and analytics tools, AI-powered forecasting and pipeline management, and integrations with other sales and marketing tools.

Oriented toward aligning people, process, platform and insights for revenue acceleration, the McAlign framework is another that seeks to unify sales, marketing, customer success and revenue operations under one strategy. This agile model boasts an ability to mine processes, track the customer life cycle, optimize customer journeys and create unified revenue funnel view across various revenue functions.

 

How to apply a RevOps framework

You know you need a RevOps framework to align fractured processes, tools and teams across your company. There are many approaches to growing this muscle within your organization, but these basics will get you started while you gather a holistic view of your revenue growth and determine (or design!) the best framework to suit your needs.

• Step 1: Define goals and responsibilities. This could include optimizing revenue-generating processes, improving sales and marketing alignment, and managing customer experience. 
• Step 2: Identify necessary roles and skills needed to meet those goals. This could include roles such as revenue operations manager, sales operations manager, marketing operations manager, customer success operations manager or data analyst.
• Step 3: Determine a reporting structure. Some organizations may choose to have the team report directly to the CEO, while others may choose to have the team report to the VP of Sales or another executive.
• Step 4: Establish collaboration between revenue-generating teams to align goals, processes and metrics. These may include sales, marketing, customer success, etc.
• Step 5: Leverage technology and data. Your team should have access to tools and technologies that enable efficient and effective analysis of revenue-generating activities.
• Step 6: Agree on metrics and KPIs (given the data and skills available on the team) that align with the organization’s revenue goals. Regularly report progress.

 

Get your RevOps framework up and running

A RevOps framework aligns and optimizes the revenue-generating functions within an organization. It’s the proven way to equip the right people with the data and technology to streamline their processes, make the right decisions for your customers and drive predictable revenue growth. 

Advancements in data analysis and automation will continue to supercharge RevOps models in the years to come. As you can imagine, the deeper the insights you have into your customers’ behavior and readiness to purchase, the stronger your RevOps foundation becomes, allowing for even more efficiencies and profits to be gained during revenue growth activities. 

Just as B2C companies have moved from demographics to psychographics, B2B needs to shift from firmographics to exegraphics—dynamic data that reveals how a company executes on its mission. Want to see the exegraphics behind your best customers so you can uncover their hidden traits and target others just like them? Contact us, and we’ll show you.

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

• HubSpot Revenue Operations Certification
• Revenue Growth Architecture School – Pavilion
• Unleashing ROI Course
• Revenue Operations Development Course – Saasy Sales
• Revenue Marketing Basics Course

Revenue operations podcasts

• RevOps Podcast
• Revenue Innovators Podcast | Outreach
• The Revenue Engine | SalesIQ 
• Breadcrumbs Podcast – Revenue Cafe
• Operations with Sean Lane | Drift
• The Revenue Amplification Podcast by DealHub

Revenue operations online communities

• RevGenius
• The RevOps Collective
• RevOps Co-op for Revenue Operations Professionals
• Systematic: The Only Community for Leaders on the Digital Frontline

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.

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.”