How To Climb Revenue Everest
How To Climb Revenue Everest
The 3 things new RevOps leaders need to do before they can drive revenue
A shout-out to Shantanu Shekhar for sparking the idea (look out for a podcast episode featuring him next month).
Let’s say that you’ve just landed as a RevOps leader in a new organization.
Congratulations!
Now what?
I’ve been talking to a lot of RevOps leaders out there recently and hearing about their journeys, and most of them have shared a similar experience.
You know that you want to drive revenue, but the idea of getting there is like climbing Mount Everest.
You know it’s possible (You’ve heard stories of people climbing similar mountains).
And you’re more than eager to start.
But you’re looking at that peak, and you can’t figure out where to begin.
And sure, there are plenty of 30/60/90 day RevOps plans you can find somewhere else on the internet.
Definitely read all you can from there.
But I think it really comes down to 3 things you need to nail.
1 - Understand the revenue target
Simply put, you have to understand where your organization wants to go, this year or next.
E.g. is the number 40% more or 400% more.
And maybe check that the goal is not to climb an entirely different mountain - consider these YoY ARR Growth benchmarks:
<$1M - 100%
$1-2.5M - 79%
$2.5-10M - 50%
$10-20M - 72%
$20-50M - 40%
>$50M - 30%
Source: Openview 2022 SaaS benchmark report
2 - Figure out where you’re at right now
You know you want to get to the peak, but exactly how far are you?
Are you halfway there?
Are you at base camp?
Are you at the souvenir shop with all the tourists?
In other words, understand the layout of your revenue engine end-to-end.
What has it delivered last year?
Through which channels?
Are they ready to scale to support the new goal?
What processes, tools, data pieces need to be there to support that?
3 - Know how you’re getting there
Now it’s time to figure out what route to take to get to the peak.
The South-Route is shorter but a lot steeper than North.
How many sherpas, mules, and kilos of food are you gonna bring?
Do you need ropes or ladders?
Now it’s about which channels can deliver how much revenue by when.
How many hands will you need with current performance to chew through all of this in time?
Where are your key gaps, e.g. where do you need to re-engineer the process, implement a tool to support productivity or invent a new motion or segment from scratch?
And only once you’ve gone through this - thinking through or discussing it - you know what you need to focus on next.
What I see way to many times is this:
Everyone agrees that they want to climb Mt. Everest
But most of them are in the tourist shop
And they wear flip flops and only packed a Snickers bar for food
And if you as RevOps in this situation fret the most about Outreach vs Salesloft, then you need to realize you are a part of the problem.
Cheers, Toni