4 RevOps advice you should NOT take
Some lies are repeated so often that it feels like they are true.
Here are common RevOps pieces of advice that you perhaps should not take.
First of all …
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Moving on to the advice you should avoid:
1. You need the best-in-class CRM
Depending on the size or maturity of the company, chances are that RevOps won’t be one of the decision-makers when is time to pick a CRM, but will become its guardian shortly.
Indeed, the CRM is one of those systems that you need to choose wisely, because their implementation is long, onboarding is a pain, their price is not cheap and processes and integrations will be designed to accommodate their features and limitations.
However, it doesn’t mean you need to break the bank right away and purchase what all your Ops and founders mates are using.
And, depending on the maturity of the company and how your sales cycle looks like, the last thing your Account Executives and BDRs need is an ultra-complex system that’s extremely hard to use. It will hurt your adoption and your budget.
I’ll give an example:
Long years ago (yes, I’m old), I worked for a B2C company that had around four types of sales processes, depending on the size of the client (from SMB to Enterprise), with particularities in each region of the country (by the way, a HUGE country).
The CRM we had was far from perfect, had glitches now and then, its analytics didn’t clarify anything and the sales team had to constantly update it through an app for every client they visited.
To make things worse, the sales processes as a whole were full of flaws, the sales management was not so pleased with the idea of “delaying” the sellers' time to update a system, the sales team felt like that little app was constantly monitoring them and their equipment was not always the best.
Every day we thought about switching to Salesforce. Nevertheless, making this move without fixing all the “offline” issues, the company would burn money and waste time from the analysts and sales with training for the sake of having the best CRM.
2. BI is mandatory as soon as possible
I lost track of how many times I heard the sentences below (with their proper variations):
- “Once we have a BI tool, we will have these analyses”
- “If we had a BI, we would know what we need to improve in Sales”
- “You can’t create these charts, because we don’t have a BI”
- “When are we going to move these metrics into a BI?”
- “Implementing a BI will empower us to forecast future trends more accurately.”
- “BI can provide us with real-time insights”
And so on…
Here is the thing. If:
- the data in your CRM is a complete mess
- the business management doesn’t have clarity on the metrics they need to track
- a core area that will be served by this BI is brand new or is getting up to speed
- no one in the team has a clue about how BI works*
BI WILL NOT BE A LIFESAVER
Before the basics I mentioned above are not sorted out, implementing a BI tool will intensify the current problems and bring new ones, such as:
- Can you create that beautiful high-stakes chart I saw in my friend’s presentation?
- Can you change the colour in these graphs?
- That number is not matching my reports…
- My dashboard is not updating. Can you take a look?
Once the business leaders are, at least, 85%-90% sure of what needs to be measured and analysts are confident that the CRM reports and spreadsheets are setting limits to their analysis and becoming a living hell, then it is time to evaluate a BI.
*If the analysts of the company don’t master any BI software, the company can offer proper training. My point is that sometimes management treats those tools as a simple “plug and play” that anyone can handle without knowing the basics.
And if you don’t know how to pick the best data visualizations for what you need, here is a full guide recommended by Data Analysts.
3. Get certified or die
I see this one almost every day in Ops communities, usually in the shape of a question.
Frequently, it starts like this:
I want to transition to RevOps. Which certifications do I need?
The question above is fair. This is especially true for those coming from different fields who need to demonstrate to recruiters that they have the essential knowledge required for Ops positions.
Or, if the person already is in Ops, the question could be like:
I already have X and Y certifications. Which other certification do I need now to stand out?
After someone posts questions like those, it doesn’t take long for almost everyone to have an opinion about why certification X is better than 2X, why Y is more relevant than Z and the arguments keep popping up.
And I believe I get it when I see people attached to this idea that certifications are a must-have.
They give you a [illusional] feeling that you have a competence badge because you ran after education and, sometimes, spent real money on it.
To give you an idea, by the time I’m writing this article, the Salesforce Certified Administrator certification costs $200.00, LeanData certifications cost $49.00 to $99.00 per module, PowerBI Data Analyst certification can cost $ 165.00 and Lean Six Sigma Green Belt can cost up to $349.00!
If you don’t have sponsorship from the company, these “badges” can be a significant expense in your budget.
Also, as you invested so much in having them, you might tend towards being reluctant to use a different system besides the one you got certified for.
My point is that, whenever someone asks me one of the questions above, be it to move to a new position or be more “marketable”, my answer is the same:
Networking > Experience > Portfolio > Certifications.
At the end of the day, knowing the right people and having lived the day by that the position requires are more important than education.
Saying this, you might ask:
I’m looking for an internship or entry-level position. I don’t have experience!
Start learning from free resources, like HubSpot Academy or any other tools the companies you want to join usually use and show off what you learned.
If you can create small projects, that’s even better.
4. Automate everything as much as you can
For this one, I learned a rule of thumb from a Sales Leader that I’ll never forget (I hope so!).
If you work in Ops, you probably faced this situation before.
You want to increase CRM adoption from the Sales Team and, one of the first measures you want to tackle is to reduce the amount of clicks and fields they need to update every time they need to manage their Accounts, Contacts and Opportunities.
Fair Enough.
But, depending on your level of experience in this field (and if you read my article about the not-so-nice parts of RevOps) you know that integrations and automation have their limitation.
Also, when the Sales team is dealing directly with the Relationship side of the CRM acronym, you better be careful turning it into a one-click-one-size-fits-all Salesforce flow.
I know that features like the flow I mentioned offer resources that explore conditions to set different rules according to each specific situation.
But when the CRM user is working on a process that can have a direct impact on the customer, it can be wise to make it more “manual”.
Examples:
- Initial Opportunity Qualification: while automated lead scoring and qualification processes can help prioritize opportunities, the initial qualification stage may require human judgment to assess the prospect’s unique needs
- Upselling or Cross-selling: pushing additional products or services without considering the customer’s specific needs can alienate them
- Decision Criteria: identifying the criteria the prospect will use to make a purchasing decision involves understanding their priorities, preferences, and evaluation process, which may evolve throughout the sales cycle and require ongoing human interaction to be captured accurately.
This list, of course, is far from being exhausted.
Now, if you are struggling to figure out if you should or not automate an extremely specific process in your CRM, here is the rule of thumb I want to keep for a lifetime:
▶ If the task is mindless, no-brainer, low-risk and it’s just a waste of time:
Automate it!
▶ If the task involves high risks, high revenue, and requires a certain level of management or customer relationship:
Think twice before automating
Moreover, if this task doesn’t take too long (let’s say, two minutes)
Automation is great, but two seconds of your time isn’t worth the risk of hurting your business!
Have you ever received any Ops advice that looks dubious to you?
Share in the comments! I may write an article about it just for you!
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