RevOps is gaining a lot of traction lately and for good reason - we're unifying your internal operations and strategies to drive efficient and predictable business growth. This is especially important for Go-to-Market (GTM) teams who are executing the timely strategy crucial to establishing a foothold and scaling.
However, most companies struggle to dial up their GTM strategies that support RevOps, which in turn should support a powerful, internal Revenue Engine (RevEngine). At AK Ops, we define a RevEngine as the overall program of marketing and sales automation, campaigns, and insights that dictate how you deploy sales efforts to support the RevOps role of the organization.
That’s why I’m sharing the 3 components to an efficient outbound sales motion that actually works. Everyone wants the third component, while everyone talks about the second pillar—yet everyone skips the first! This is why AK Ops will always exist 😄
The foundational elements of every successful RevOps and GTM strategy are the least sexy and most commonly overlooked requirements. In our opinion, there are 4 non-negotiables to the foundation of your strategy.
A healthy domain is crucial to maximizing your email campaign results. With an unhealthy domain, your results will diminish over time, deliverability will be poor, and your email rates will suffer. Or worse, you won't hit inboxes at all and you'll see your own inboxes shut down and domains blacklisted. I have seen so many companies scrap content and positioning because of poor performance when in fact the fall has nothing to do with the copy or campaign at all. We take this part very seriously with a slew of tools to help us maintain strong health and performance. At AK Ops, our comprehensive Domain Health program covers:
Every growth-stage company should have a solid understanding of their targeting, or total addressable market (TAM), which includes all personas from the industries served. Even better, they know their sales addressable market (SAM) - this is the “center of the fairway" of your TAM aka the best personas and industries served. At AK Ops, our Targeting approach includes:
Inbox Management is an often overlooked area… “Don’t you just book the meetings and delete the rest?” 🙄
However, maintaining an organized inbox is essential to running the powerful automation behind inboxes supporting outbound efforts. We leverage the power of HubSpot’s email plugin and our Inbox Standard Operating Procedures for maximum efficiency. Our SOP for Sales Development Inboxes includes:
When reps neglect dispositioning the data, we see inboxes shut down in days and domains crash after a week. Yes, it is a tedious daily task, but the return is MASSIVE. This is why we (AK Ops) have brought this service in-house for our clients - to ensure it’s done and to protect the results of our partnerships!
The last component is the daily health monitoring of operational functions, campaigns performance, and funnel conversions. There should be a sole owner of all action items who is responsible for reading the data, executing pivots, and providing recommendations for weekly strategy meetings. Think of this person as the pilot operating the control panel of your HubSpot - if things are slipping, they’ll know the same day. If a campaign is converting 2x our typical campaigns, they’ll know. If we need to realign expectations with the sales reps, this person will see it in the data. We live and die by a dashboard that bubbles up the pulse of the RevEngine as a single source for the daily operators.
Once you’ve covered the first pillar and its four components, it’s time to move onto your campaigns. These are the four essential campaigns that every healthy RevOps program needs.
The campaigns leveraged to generate and nurture the pipeline.
The goal of demand generation campaigns should be to serve your prospects. We believe in the fundamental principle of serving, then selling. Nurture contacts with consultative content through marketing campaigns from marketing senders.
After you’ve served your prospects, it’s time to sell to them. Lead generation should involve an ongoing deployment of methodical sales sequences from sales senders based on segmented targeting or marketing engagement asking for interest or a meeting. This requires daily monitoring and execution of GTM sales development pivots such as target personas, sales copy, cadence of touches, and more.
Whether you use HubSpot, Outreach or Salesloft, the timeliness of the sales touches is just as important as what your email says. Be intentional - and always provide value in your plain text emails.
The goal of pipeline nurture is to ensure coverage and conversion. You should intentionally build your pipeline to nurture opportunities from the reps like Closed Lost Retries, No Shows, Zombie Deal Wake-ups, Nurture for Laters, and Competitor Contract campaigns. Ensure nothing falls through the cracks and that all communication is relevant and timely.
These campaigns are nice to introduce a sales leader or a member of your CS team. This helps shake things up, build the importance they are to you, and encourage deeper collaboration to keep things moving or back on track!
Rep enablement should focus on optimizing your sales team. While your lead gen program targets the majority of your targets, prioritize your reps' time for hunting Tier 1 target accounts. These accounts require good stewardship with extensive personal touches. Engagement notifications from the demand gen campaigns will enable reps to stay relevant while they're penetrating larger opportunities.
Enabled reps are 10Xs happier than unsupported sales orgs. This isn’t proven data, just my personal experience supporting hundreds of sales reps in the last decade. Prioritizing rep enablement is a no brainer when you combine that (very) important ”happiness” observation with the 4x productivity and efficiencies with sales enablement fact. 🤯
Everyone needs RevOps, sure, but the best organizations have a RevEngine that operates to deliver insights and produce pipeline that then support the company’s RevOps.
The functioning engine supports & aligns to the RevOps of the sales org.
This includes the automation, continuous campaigns, and actionable insights that support the company's sales and marketing goals. The math and data collected here directs the strategy and how the Go-to-Market team operates the demand and lead gen campaigns.
For our clients, this is the tangible goal of our partnership while we serve as the daily operator. Ultimately a strong sales-oriented, operationally-minded teammate will inherit the daily management of this internally-built program that will run within your tech stack forever.
This includes the reporting, funnel management, and strategic direction of the company. RevOps is the source of truth for company health and where reporting, process, and leadership alignment collide, painting a full picture of strategies deployed based on funnel trends from all channels against revenue impact. This insight allows companies to strategically focus their sales efforts on what matters most.
Access the full scope infographic here.
Most partners don’t approach Rev Ops as thoroughly as my team does. For each and every of our clients, our goal is to build an internal RevEngine that will scale and grow with them forever and ever. But don't take our word for it!