Last week I spoke with the Head of RevOps at a company that’s doing $1B in ARR in their SaaS business. I told him I could identify 15% of their revenue they’re losing right now to Revenue Leak. That’s $150,000,000. They were shocked – how? Here’s what I told them: You’re stuck in a financial model and not thinking about the actual process in which you run revenue. You need to know: 1. How your teams are running revenue. 2. The process behind your team's 13 week cadence. 3. How that’s going from the reps all the way up to execs. Once you get out of the number crunching exercise, you can start optimizing how you run revenue and collaborate in every meeting. That was the “aha!” moment. Change the way you think about revenue and start winning more revenue moments.
Focusing solely on financial models can obscure the real revenue processes. As a well-known investor once said, "You can't manage what you don't measure." Understanding the granular details of how revenue is generated and managed across all levels is crucial. This approach not only identifies leaks but also uncovers opportunities for optimization. Startups should prioritize process transparency and continuous improvement to capture every revenue moment.
You are touching on a point here that will become increasingly important - B2B sales is a human endeavour. You can't win it from behind a computer screen. RevOps leaders and their teams will do well to spend more time in the field, with sellers, with customers, with partners (really with them, not listening to call recordings), and through this understand the buyer's journey much more clearly. It helps bring the spreadsheet to life and understand that behind the numbers are real humans deciding what to do next.
You need a cohesive view to be able to spot the root cause of this problems. Majority of them have data silos which is impossible to even start
Absolutely spot on! It’s often not just about the numbers but understanding the underlying processes and how they impact revenue flow. By focusing on how revenue is managed and optimizing those processes, you can uncover and address significant revenue leaks. Great insight!
So what did you actually do?
Great insights on revenue optimization! 🚀 Changing perspective can indeed uncover hidden opportunities. 🌟
Fix your Data before jumping on AI | Co-founder & CEO at Nektar.ai | Data Leakage Today is Revenue Leakage Tomorrow! Follow me to learn how to run a data-driven efficient GTM engine.
3moAndy, thanks for bringing this conversation to the forefront. I had a similar conversation with CXO at another company that is publicly listed and does a couple of billion dollars in revenue. They admitted they are leaking revenue through massive customer churn. The problem is spread across the revenue process and is not just related to Net New Business anymore. A lot of these customers at their scale still do not understand where are people spending time and with whom and how these relationships(activities) or lack of it result in revenue leakage.