A few uncomfortable truths about RevOps: 1️⃣ RevOps is like therapy. Nobody hires a RevOps team because things are going great. Like a good therapist, a qualified RevOps team will take note of the recurring problems you’re having and help you find the root cause so that you can get back to building (instead of fighting). 2️⃣ A good RevOps team will slow you down. I’ve had clients who, instead of treating us as a strategic partner, have asked us to speed up the sh**ty things they’re already doing. Know how many times that’s worked well? ZERO. Instead of helping you drive faster in the wrong direction, a qualified RevOps team will strategically add friction in the areas of your business that *should* be moving more slowly. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. 3️⃣ If everybody loves your RevOps team, they’re not doing their job. A good RevOps team should be pissing everybody off in your company—in service of a better way of working, of course. They should constantly be calling time out, challenging your assumptions, asking you ‘why’, telling you ‘no,’ and pursuing outcomes instead of tasks. And if they aren’t? They should probably be fired. #b2b #saas #revops #operations #gtm
How do you balance "being disliked because you're actually doing the right thing" with "need to be liked enough to get the user to adopt the behavior"? 👀
In my experience, RevOps should make the whole organization more efficient and effective. Smooth is fast, I agree with that, but I don't think RevOps necessarily needs to slow you down. One of the things where I see great potential for every RevOps expert is automation. Automate everything that can be automated. I like to think that if a computer can do it, a computer should do it.
"Make my terrible strategy work better" is a very common psychology. It happens when the leader is desperately attached to their idea of how things *should* work, and refuses to understand why it doesn't work. I don't think they can really be helped until they change to an open mind. They tend to shoot the messenger.
I had a former CEO who would say Anne and her team are the bullshit meter for the company. He meant it in a good way though!
You're my therapist; such great content Taft!
If your RevOps team provides demonstratable value, they generally aren't hated; that's where org-change skills come in. I know plenty of RevOps teams that are beloved by their organization, even if/when they slow things down. The difference is they have earned the ability to cause those delays, and those impacted trust and respect those delays will help them. RevOps should be solving problems and improving things for customers and employees. Effective teams do both and garner buy-in throughout the process. My stance on #3 (like it or hate it): If your RevOps team is not appreciated and loved, it's probably because they lack critical business-impacting skills.
The mindset needs to change. RevOps is often seen as Sales’ & Marketing’s SysAdmins when they should be seen as trusted consultants. And RevOps leaders should ensure their teams have a seat at the table so they fully understand the business & goals.
I disagree, with #3 but mostly #2 its often the data and infrastructure that keeps RevOps team from moving fast + ofc day to day fires fighting. That shouldn't stop you from going fast, I think the implementing and tracking solutions is what we should take our time with not the analytics and set up.
Oh jeez. Not sure if it's my ego but I swear everyone at my company loves me. Hope they don't see this post 😉
Strategic RevOps Consulting for B2B SaaS
5moThis is all driven by leadership though. Do they want to hustle and slap things together to get everything done this quarter or do they want to build a more repeatable scalable GTM engine? Do they want to push back on their team that there's a right way to do things or fall victim to complaints every time people are asked to do more work than they want to do?