How to Build a Better Relationship Between RevOps & Sales

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When it comes to RevOps and sales, there can often be a push and pull dynamic between the two. Nothing in particular establishes this dynamic; it’s more like a series of small misunderstandings over time leading to a breakdown in communication. But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are a few different things RevOps can do to bridge the gap and forge a stronger relationship with sales. Our CEO & Co-founder, Brad Smith, recently spoke with two RevOps leaders, Dina Varshavsky from Humu and Kali Berry from Remesh, on why it’s so important for RevOps to have a strong relationship with sales. Let’s walk through their top advice.

How sales and RevOps teams can work together to strategically manage change

From the very beginning of a process or data change, make sure to get executive buy-in . It’s imperative to have someone at the top that’s fully bought into the method your team chooses. You can have the best of intentions and the best solution, but if you don’t sell leadership on it, you could be in for some unnecessary pain during the process. Make sure those executives are brought in early to the process —no one likes to join an initiative halfway through. Early adopters are vital to the change you want to make. Sales and RevOps can work hand-in-hand during this change process. RevOps can work on data enrichment in their org to make certain processes or things better somewhere else in the funnel. Meanwhile, sales teams can provide a lot of context and feedback to the processes being worked on. If this process is a big technical lift for the sales team, try and find someone who’s not as technical early on in the process to help identify what you may be overcomplicating. And when it comes to improving efficiency on lead routing and management, your SDRs definitely have opinions, so you should ask them, too! People who are against change may not feel like they’re part of the overall process, so make sure to keep everyone included and they’ll be more comfortable with the change you’re implementing.

The critical processes you can improve for better alignment

First thing’s first: remember your initial process improvement will never be your last . If there’s one thing a process isn’t, it’s “set-it-and-forget-it.” It’s absolutely okay to get a V1 of your change out the door—this way, you can get the feedback you need to make the change even better for everyone. Plus, if you’re not measuring why you’re putting these processes in place, there’s a good chance you’re doing busywork that’s less important for the business. You can know for sure by implementing feedback loops with your team . Find out what’s working, what’s not, and what can be improved. Remember that some people prefer to give feedback anonymously and are more vocal when that’s the case, so be sure to provide options for anonymity. Most importantly: actually act on the feedback you receive , and make sure the team knows you’ve acted on it. There’s not much worse than feeling like you aren’t being heard and your issues aren’t important to anyone. Keeping everything transparent is ideal and lets your team know you’re listening. Speaking of keeping things transparent, we recommend publishing your sales engagement rules so everyone knows how things work. That way, everyone will have the same resource to go to when a question arises. Don’t keep these rules stagnant, either. Review your rules every year as your business changes and grows, edit them as needed, and republish with the same transparency. If you feel like you’re under communicating, you probably are. If you feel like you’re overcommunicating, you’re probably hitting the sweet spot.

How sharing data keeps sales more informed and builds a better customer lifecycle

How can sales know how successful (or not) something is if they don’t have the data to back that up? Providing as much data as you can, especially for a new seller, can be huge. Take your actionable metrics and share them with the sales team —make sure you know what action will be taken with those metrics and don’t be afraid to push back or correct assumptions. As the RevOps team, you’re in charge of being the data gatekeeper, but you’re also in charge of providing accurate, actionable data to show how you convert through your pipeline and build it over time. Consider sharing metrics like CSAT and NPS scores , as well as product usage, with the sales team. This can be a way for the sales team to gauge how their customers are performing, how they’re interacting with your company, and how they’re utilizing the tools your product has to offer. Are customers using and enjoying the product? Are they an active user but consistently report low NPS scores? All of this data can be incredibly valuable. As the RevOps team, you also need to take control over reports and dashboards. Especially if metrics are going up and to the right, there’s a tendency to dive through numbers and create your own story by building your own reports. We recommend having an “ops approved” folder of reports and dashboards that you share with the company, full of approved and verified data. This is a great way to highlight the key metrics your team cares about and wants to report on often, as well.

Key takeaways

Actionable, actionable, actionable—that’s the main takeaway when aligning RevOps and sales. Both teams are looking for actionable insights and data that the whole company believes in, and this is what will take your processes to the next level. Plus, don’t forget to answer the why. We all know how to build a new process or implement updates, but we don’t always know why we’re doing it. Time is the most valuable asset we all have, so be sure to balance your time commitment to doing something with the right business outcome. To learn even more about the relationship between RevOps and sales, watch the full webinar recording .

How sales and RevOps teams can work together to strategically manage change

The critical processes you can improve for better alignment

How sharing data keeps sales more informed and builds a better customer lifecycle

Key takeaways

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