The boring part of working with RevOps — that you don’t hear so often
In this article, I tell you what is the most boring part about working with Revenue Operations and that is little talked about out there.
First of all …
If you enjoy this content, consider supporting the project by buying me a coffee here.
It is the basic requirement to make this content real (I’ll ask it again at the end of the article, don’t worry! 😄).
Second of all …
I have been working with SalesOps/RevOps since 2021, so I have some authority about what I’m saying here.
Feel free to disagree!
The story behind
In 2023, while I was researching about the Revenue Operations market, I found this article from Forbes:
The argument Forbes used to call RevOps the fastest growing job in America is backed up by a CNBC article, which is backed up by a LinkedIn News article that summarizes a LinkedIn Survey called Jobs on the Rise 2023 (never-ending maze of references).
If you take a quick look at the LinkedIn survey, you'll notice that the title of the Forbes article is somewhat misleading.
The LinkedIn survey indicates that one of the most in-demand job titles is Head of Revenue Operations, which is a highly specialized position.
Also, it overlooks the fact that, in recent years, professionals from Sales Ops, Customer Success Ops, and Marketing Ops (pick your ‘Ops’ poison) transitioned almost automatically to RevOps, to follow the trend and “organize the house”.
But at least one thing in the article is true:
(…) a quick Google search will tell you nobody really agrees on what Revenue Operations is. Few can define it.
That’s why the RevOps experience can vary so much among the professionals who work in this field, moreover depending on the size of the company, the team and how seriously RevOps is taken in the organization.
With that, here, I listed some not-so-glamorous traits that are usually common in the RevOps day by day.
The boring part of working as RevOps
- The Sys Admin Curse
You can work on a variety of strategic planning, tactical projects, critical decisions and all that good stuff.
At the end of the day, you will have to:
- troubleshoot glitches in systems
- review layouts, fields and objects in CRM
- reset passwords
- find out why that tiny data point was not updated immediately
- ask (again) for users to update the CRM
And so on…
And it only becomes more difficult when we move on to the next topic.
2. Integrations Nightmare
I lived the two extremes of this bad dream:
- Company with barely any system (i.e. the CRM and a bunch of spreadsheets)
- Company with all the systems that you can think of
This nightmare is usually often in the second scenario.
As the company evolves, has a generous budget to spend and wants to set the best tech stack that money can buy, the company starts to purchase a variety of different software that offers from the most basic to the most esoteric solutions:
- Best-in-class CRM
- Sales Engagement platform
- Conversational intelligence recorder (like Gong)
- Marketing automation
- Customer Success system
- Data enrichment and lead generation provider
- AI notetaking
(Comment below your favourite tech that I didn’t mention here)
This might seem marvellous at first (except for Bookkeeping), but has a hidden cost that the sellers of these solutions don’t tell you:
Systems don’t work in perfect harmony.
In other words:
Integrations break. And they break A LOT.
After all, software has bugs, and glitches and is made by different companies, with different processes for software development.
It gets worse when you integrate two different systems that are competitors in the market (classic example, Salesforce and HubSpot).
The outcomes of this issue can be:
- delays in the Sales Cycle
- mismatching data
- leads that don’t receive engagement points at the right time
- renewal-related information that Customer Success doesn’t receive
And it is up to you, the RevOps in the room to fix the mess and try to do your best so it doesn’t happen again.
The integration nightmare also leads to or exacerbates the next problem.
3. The endless work to clean the CRM data
This one is underestimated and it is much harder to fix than it seems.
The root causes of this problem vary from data uploaded to the CRM recklessly, lack of data validation processes and integrations that overlap the data in the CRM.
But, once installed, it is challenging to reverse, as you can’t just delete everything and start over (I wish! 😁).
And if you try to benchmark and find something that can help you get rid of the duplicates and stale data, chances are that will receive a pitch for another system that can “miraculously” save your life.
Truth is: there is no perfect platform that keeps data clean and updated automatically.
They can help, but it still requires tons of manual work and agreement with other areas about what it means to have clean data.
And the “flags” of data issues will keep coming.
4. Sales, Marketing and CS diverge: and you are in the middle
RevOps promise is to break silos and bring peace among Sales, Marketing and Customer Success.
The reality is that, even in the best companies, where these three areas have the best intentions in the world, they will diverge, conflicts will come, and you, RevOps, will have to play The Devil’s Advocate role.
At a certain point, it is healthy as debate can generate better ideas and innovation.
But to be the diplomatic middle person in this fight is not the easiest job in the world and you have to be careful so you don’t be biased to one of the sides.
5. Projects Beyond Your Scope
This part is about what I mentioned earlier - it's hard to put a clear definition to RevOps.
At first, RevOps should be the bridge that connects Sales, Marketing and Customer Success.
However, chances are that RevOps will embrace projects that should belong to other areas because it is hard to define its scope limits.
I mean, it is easy to determine that the role of Sales is to sell, but it is not obvious to settle if RevOps should or not work on a contract automation project.
In addition, moreover in smaller companies and startups, RevOps might be designated to lead projects outside their responsibility, just because there is no one else to do it. And it is part of the game.
6. Identity crisis
God, this one hurts deep in the soul!
I have a full article here that explains this phenomenon in detail, but, long story short, the thing is:
you work in a bit of everything.
Like this:
- you assist sales, but you don’t sell
- you support customer satisfaction, but you don’t face the customers
- you make lead generation viable, but you don’t own the campaigns
If you are not following, what I said so far is:
- You have to do support and system maintenance tasks that are not related to the value of the business
- you are in the middle of the three core areas directly related to revenue generation and retention, but you don’t generate or retain revenue
- your scope and goals can be abstract and hard to define
So, who are you and what exactly do you do?
And, do you know what is tough to get when the company stakeholders don’t know how you are contributing for their business?
You guessed it: raises and promotions 💸.
At least for me, that’s the cruellest part of this role.
After all, if it is not clear how you bring value, it is hard to be rewarded for it.
And, to be honest, I don’t have a solution for this problem now, but as soon as I find it out, I’ll share here!
So follow me, and stay tuned!
Help yourself:
- Get organized: try Notion here 📅
- Don’t do it all on your own. Find a professional to help you (from $5.00) here 🤑
Support the page:
- Buy me a Coffee (or tea, up to you) ☕
