This is the next article in our continuing series on RevOps—revenue operations—and how Pipeliner CRM equates with RevOps.
We quoted renowned management consultant and author Peter Drucker in our last article: “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Carrying on from there, you can only measure something when data is not manipulated and is complete, correct, and holistic. RevOps—which Pipeliner CRM actually is—makes this possible.
Throughout the recent pandemic, much of the data released to the public did not meet these standards. The public ceased believing it. When that happens with a company, the company is in deep trouble.
There are multiple data streams flowing throughout a company. Bringing these data streams together provides a holistic overview of the data, and allows for its full and complete understanding.
Making Use of Current Data
The data used in previous times for management decision-making was often obsolete. A company would often use the data from the last quarter—but that means the data is three months old. In three months, things can change dramatically.
Outdated information will never be as useful as current data. You need data you can analyze regarding your company, its different departments, your products, and services. The challenge of the digitalization and digital transformation is the current integration of all your various processes.
We have worked so long and hard in isolated silos that this is the primary issue we face today. One department was not aware of what another department was doing. The flow of data from all of these areas is crucial. It’s not just marketing data, for example, from the website—how many leads are coming in, what kind of leads they are, and how they’re flowing over—it is the flow of all data.
Creation of Assumptions
Having all data currently available makes it possible for RevOps to truly strategize. This allows them to work backward and create assumptions.
Let us say that, for example, your operations required revenue of $1 million. You can then figure out how many salespeople you need to make this amount, by looking at the average of what salespeople have made per week in the recent past. To make the example simple, we could say that if you have 100 salespeople, each of them would have to make an average of $10,000 per week.
You next need to figure out what opportunities need to exist in your pipeline so that each sales rep can close $10,000 weekly. You should analyze the average time between a lead coming in and the closing of this $10,000. For simplification’s sake, we could say that closing this amount requires 7 days, 1 week.
Now figure your conversion rate. You can break it down to the number of opportunities—products, customers, cross or up-sales, whatever the type of opportunity is—that are required for each salesperson to close $10,000. If your conversation rate is 25 percent, then you would need, for each rep, 4 times the final amount, which would mean $40,000 in each salesperson’s pipeline—$4 million in volume—so that they end up with $10,000 at the end of the week.
Next, analyze these opportunities to see where they are coming from. Are they converting from website leads? Are they outbound leads from salespeople? Are they coming from somewhere else? This understanding is the challenge for marketing so that marketing is presenting you with qualified appointments and leads to equate to $4 million in value weekly. Looking through the data, you can see whether or not it’s possible for the marketing to do that.
Additionally, make sure you’re retaining your customers. Have a look at how many support tickets you currently have. If there are too many tickets, you’re at risk of losing customers. You should also examine how many customers have canceled out because of inferior support.
RevOps Holistic Data Requirements
What does such a holistic approach require? A number of people working seamlessly and interactively, supported by efficient technology. Otherwise, data will not be able to be used harmoniously with customers.
Pipeliner, in a RevOps capacity, is totally unique in this regard. First of all, we are an open system able to connect with any other application. From other applications, you can automatically import data either unidirectionally or bidirectionally.; It is updated in real-time. All of this can be done using Pipeliner’s Automatizer functionality, with no coding. You can create automated processes to immediately convey the correct information to the proper departments, people, and management.
One more requirement must be met for data to be rapidly assimilated: perfect visualization.
Pipeliner Use Example
Let us take an example with Pipeliner. For leads and sales management, a manager could create and utilize dashboard reports. The manager can dive right into any aspect of the data to view specifics of it.
Management cannot strategize and see company direction without the use of trends, so Pipeliner allows trends to be viewed, too. What did you do wrong? What did you do right? These are questions best answered by trends.
Another area where Pipeliner truly excels is its Performance Insight functionality. Management can look over win probabilities and compare them to what they should be, to see if sales are proceeding in the right direction.
Fine-Tune Operations
When you can monitor real-time data, performance can easily be fine-tuned. Today’s masters of using data to fine-tune would be Jeff Bezos with Amazon or Elon Musk with SpaceX. In the latter example, can you imagine what kind of data points are required from every sector for launching a spacecraft? It requires very tight coordination of live data.
This is why I’ve said time and time again that you will not be able to live in the future without automation and technology, without digitalization and digital transformation. Your company will not be able to keep up, because the speed of commerce and competition is constantly increasing. You’ll be left far behind.
Covid Lessons
Out of necessity, the pandemic brought us to the level of instant communication with each other.
Some distance back in history, in order to communicate people had to travel to meet each other. They could send letters, but they wouldn’t arrive for days or weeks. The telephone certainly improved things, as it allows people to speak in real-time. But it was expensive, especially for long-distance, and we still couldn’t see each other.
Just prior to the internet, we had text messages which sped up communication. And even when the internet arrived, we still weren’t communicating on the level we are today with videoconferencing.
Because of today’s communication efficiency, much business travel has become obsolete. People have realized they can jump on a videoconferencing call, eliminating the need to drive, fly or stand in line. They can even see each other as if they were right next to each other.
Through automation, inefficiency is being eliminated everywhere in our lives. This is especially important in companies because in business a company must be efficient to be productive.
Technology applies instantaneousness to communication—but also to much more. In the future, everything will be instant. Today we already see this in other examples such as inventory—we can immediately see what’s in stock and what we can promise customers.
The Meaning of RevOps
The primary challenge for a revenue operations department or manager is to bring together all of these data points and to ensure they’re all correct. We cannot have the data chaos that covid brought because it would drive companies out of business. RevOps is responsible for instantaneous data, data resources, and outcomes, and visualization being correct between silos.
The best platform to handle RevOps is clearly Pipeliner CRM, which provides you with visualization and the architecture for all of the above.
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