What if you found out you were sitting on a gold mine? Would you ignore it or would you find a way to mine that gold?
Every week, I talk with new prospective clients who aren’t reaching their revenue potential. After analyzing their revenue operations (or RevOps) to look for gaps, we usually find that they have more things going right than not – a great product or service, loyal customers, a talented team – but they are sitting on a gold mine of data they can’t access.
A RevOps consultant can help you access and use that gold by measuring engagements, supporting the customer throughout the lifecycle, aligning internal teams and uncovering data that reveals insights across your entire revenue acquisition process. While some companies hire internal RevOps staff, many opt for working with an inbound marketing agency for reasons we’ll cover later in the article.
Does your company need a RevOps consultant? Here are some of the top signs that point to ‘Yes.’
If you’ve read this far, you probably know you could be generating more revenue, but you aren’t sure where the gaps are. Even with the right people in place and a great product, if you’re experiencing any of the following, consider working with a RevOps consultant:
This is usually due to a communication issue (often with some squabbling) between the sales and marketing teams. It goes something like this: Marketing gets leads and passes it on to sales without qualifying the leads through lead scoring. Sales acts on the leads but there’s no path back to marketing when the sales don’t close. Instead, they die on the vine.
And although noise created by the Great Resignation has quieted considerably, employees are still leaving for better positions, which isn’t helping the situation.
Prospective clients often turn to Kuno after they’ve lost a key employee, such as a lead salesperson or the person responsible for HubSpot operations. That knowledge is now lost and a project manager or a marketing VP, who lacks the time or technical expertise to run the show, is left holding the keys to a vehicle they don’t know how to drive. To make matters worse, they don’t even know what questions to ask.
The first step to breaking silos and aligning your teams is doing a preliminary analysis to find out what data you’re capturing, at which points you’re capturing that data and what your teams are doing with the data, such as potential leads.
This will help the RevOps consultant determine where the breakdown in communication is occurring and will also inform them how to help you maximize your CMS, such as HubSpot, to streamline processes and ensure everyone is on the same page.
If a marketing team has been cut down to a skeleton crew or there’s been turnover in leadership, data often suffers. It’s either incomplete or just plain wrong, leading the decision makers to inaccurate conclusions and decisions not grounded in the full reality.
Your consultant will ensure your data is clean and complete because if your data isn’t accurate, you’re leaving revenue on the table. A good RevOps consultant will also have a set of best practices they will help you and your team implement, such as a process for keeping data clean and performing regular audits.
Your consultant should also help you capture the right data so your KPIs reveal helpful insights you and your team can act upon.
The root cause of slowed, stagnant or inconsistent growth varies depending on the industry and the market trends. Sometimes, less-than-optimal growth is due to operational inefficiencies. For example, for lead generation to work, the back end of your CMS has to be properly configured, as described above.
Other times, markets shift, regulations change or the economy takes a downturn, all which are unpredictable causes of decreased revenue. This doesn’t mean you pull the plug on marketing! You learn to work smarter, not harder.
RevOps is a cost-effective option, even if the economy has slowed. Instead of chasing after new, shiny objects, RevOps ensures you maximize the tools you already have, identify inefficiencies and ensure your database is fully functioning regardless of economic factors.
Quick Case Study: One of our clients was getting flooded with unqualified overseas leads . Once we reviewed the situation and put the right tools and parameters in place, our client started receiving fewer overall leads, but a much higher percentage of qualified leads.
Organic traffic decrease isn’t bad if the leads are better! It’s important to target the right people, rather than aim to get as many clicks as possible. Again, tracking the right data and keeping it clean is crucial to understand what is and isn’t moving the needle for your business.
A RevOps consultant can identify opportunities to optimize the features of your CMS, such as HubSpot, as well as other technologies to improve data flow and eliminate bottlenecks in your processes.
When we first start working with a new client, we often discover manual processes that could be automated. For example, instead of creating data reports in Excel, which is time-consuming to set up and maintain, we show clients how to use HubSpot to create a variety of reports that can be customized to their needs.
If a new client doesn’t already have a CMS, or aren’t maximizing their HubSpot investment, one of the first steps at Kuno is onboarding staff and translating your problems to be solved by HubSpot, moving your challenges from the realm of abstract problems to concrete solutions.
We also see many deals and leads getting stuck in pipelines for a long time at specific stages. We ask questions to determine the holdup, such as whether the stage is even needed or if parameters for progression aren’t clearly defined, and find ways to use HubSpot to improve how sales reps are engaging at this stage.
For example, if your sales team is struggling, we can set up HubSpot to track how long it takes each rep to follow up on leads, enabling the sales manager to use this data for coaching, additional training and sales competitions.
By analyzing your database and interviewing stakeholders, a RevOps consultant helps you maximize your investment and get the most out of your data and your team.
More companies are hiring RevOps consultants to figure out what needs to be done because stakeholders don’t know what they don’t know!
For many of our clients, partnering with Kuno is more cost-effective than hiring an internal RevOps specialist, and because we have experience gained from working with a wide variety of clients in various industries, it’s unlikely you’ll have issues we haven’t encountered before.
Because we aren’t a RevOps agency, but rather a full-service marketing company, when we uncover gaps – which we certainly will– we have a talented team of content writers, demand gen specialists, SEO analysts, graphic designers and web developers who can step in to fill those gaps. This creates a seamless, cohesive experience for our customers, as well as for yours
Talk with one of our experts today to see how you can improve your revenue operations to reach your profit potential.
