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The CRO & RevOps Relationship: How to Make it Most Successful

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58% revenue growth… 72% more profit… and sales teams closing 67% more deals. These are the kinds of stats company leaders would kill to have. And according to industry insights , it's exactly the numbers organizations with a RevOps function are seeing. To no surprise, this is one of the reasons RevOps has become a critical role to the C-Suite as a whole – especially for the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). RevOps has quickly become a function sales executives simply can’t do without, enabling them to move faster, make smarter decisions and ultimately exponentially grow revenue. But how can you build a successful relationship with your RevOps leader for long-term success? Read on to find out.

Essential KPIs RevOps Surfaces For the CRO

As a CRO, your RevOps leader is key to unlocking the power of data-driven decision making. They can convert numbers into actionable strategies, providing insights that take you beyond simply surface level metrics and dashboards. A few critical KPIs RevOps surfaces regularly for sales executives include:

1. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR):

Tracks the amount of recurring revenue generated by the company each year. It is an important metric for SaaS (Software as a Service) companies.

2. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC):

Measures the cost of acquiring new customers. It includes all the expenses associated with marketing, sales, and customer success.

3. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV):

Measures the total revenue generated by a customer over their lifetime. It is an important metric for determining the long-term value of customers.

4. Win Rate:

Measures the percentage of sales opportunities that are won by the company. It is an important metric for measuring the effectiveness of the sales team.

5. Sales Cycle Length:

Measures the length of time it takes for a sales opportunity to move from the initial contact to a closed deal. It is an important metric for measuring the efficiency of the sales process.

6. Pipeline Velocity:

Measures the speed at which sales opportunities move through the sales pipeline. It is an important metric for identifying bottlenecks in the sales process.

7. Expansion MRR Growth Rate

Measures the monthly recurring revenue (MRR) growth of existing customers who have expanded their usage or subscription plan, indicating the success of upselling and cross-selling efforts.

8. Gross MRR Churn Rate

Measures the monthly recurring revenue lost due to customer cancellations or downgrades, indicating the rate of customer attrition or loss. A RevOps leader plays point collaborating across the sales and customer success teams to ensure this data is being tracked properly, and in return can be surfaced for analysis to the CRO. With their unbiased point of view, RevOps delivers data driven insights sales leaders are able to rely on.

How RevOps Influences Success Across Sales & Customer Success Teams

RevOps also has team-specific benefits, too. For sales, RevOps affords the opportunity to connect with more prospects and drive more sales. For Customer Success , RevOps provides a better way to meet customer expectations and grow existing accounts. A few of the top problems RevOps helps solve for these departments include:

For Sales:

Identifying opportunities: Offering insight into where sales teams have the greatest opportunity to close business.
Streamlining processes: Increasing sales efficiencies by analyzing workflows and reducing friction in their processes.
Automating lead routing: Architecting an intelligent distribution system to match the right leads with the sales person most likely to win the business.

For Customer Service:

Enhancing customer experiences: Intimately understanding the customer journey to design a best-in-class communication experience.
Automating campaigns: Establishing automations and processes to help secure renewals early.
Customer analysis: Collaborating with the customer service team to gain better visibility into customer health scores and overall satisfaction.

RevOps helps both teams get a 360-view of the customer journey by:

1. Aligning Processes

RevOps is responsible for creating and optimizing processes that support revenue growth across the entire customer journey. By aligning processes across GTM teams, your Ops leader can ensure that everyone is working toward the same goals and that there are no gaps or inconsistencies in the customer experience.

2. Optimizing Tools

RevOps is also responsible for identifying, integrating and optimizing the tools that these teams use to do their jobs. This includes everything from CRMs to customer retention platforms. By ensuring that these tools are integrated and optimized for the specific needs of each team, your Ops leader can help improve efficiency and effectiveness across the organization.

3. Defining Metrics

RevOps is responsible for defining the metrics that each team uses to measure success. By aligning these metrics with the overall revenue goals of the organization, RevOps ensures that everyone is working toward the same objectives. This can also help create a culture of data-driven decision-making, where teams are more likely to use data to inform their strategies and tactics. RevOps works tirelessly to promote harmonious collaboration between departments, leveraging data-driven insights and powerful automation tools in order to deliver the most optimal customer experience possible. With their support, sales and customer success teams can effectively collaborate with clear visibility, making a CROs job that much easier.

How RevOps Influences the Success of Other Departments

When we said RevOps impacts entire organizations, we weren’t kidding. One department that doesn’t report directly to the CRO but can be positively impacted by RevOps is your marketing department. Whether you have a marketing operations role or not, Ops leaders can work closely across departments to provide data cohesiveness and positively impact revenue growth. Here are a few examples:

1. Improves Lead Generation

RevOps can help marketing teams improve lead generation enhancing alignment with sales teams. Ops leaders can help ensure that the right leads are being targeted and that the lead qualification process is aligned with the sales process. This can help improve the quality of leads and ultimately lead to more closed deals.

2. Better Metrics and Reporting

RevOps can provide valuable insight into sales and marketing funnels, helping CMOs and the CROs work harmoniously to identify revenue driving opportunities. This can also help create a culture of data-driven decision-making.

3. Improved Efficiency and Effectiveness

RevOps teams often work closely with the CMO and marketing operations role to ensure consistency in processes and technologies. By streamlining these processes and optimizing tools, RevOps can help marketing teams save time and improve ROI on marketing spend. And it’s not just marketing that also benefits from the RevOps role. The broader C-Suite (as CFOs, COOs, and CEOs) frequently taps this resource when analyzing broad business performance areas. Ask a RevOps leader how often they are pulled into preparing board slides for the executive team and you’ll quickly realize how valued their role is. They play a critical role in ensuring that the exec team is equipped with the insights they need to make informed decisions and drive revenue for the business.

Finding the Right RevOps Leader

With this being such an important role to the CRO, and the broader organization you’ll want to make sure you’re hiring the right candidate for the job. After speaking with sales executives, we’ve summarized these 4 qualities you’ll want to look for when recruiting.

1. Strong Communication Skills

First and foremost, this person needs to be able to effectively communicate with a range of stakeholders, including executives like the CEO, and be able to articulate complex concerts in a clear manner. Additionally, a RevOps leader needs to be able to think strategically while also having a deep understanding of tactical execution. This allows them to bridge the gap between high-level strategy and the daily activities required to execute on that strategy.

2. Technologically Versatile

A strong Revops candidate should also be well-versed in the various technologies that are used across different departments. This includes marketing automation, CRM systems, analytics platforms, and more. Being fluent in these technologies allows them to identify and leverage tools that can streamline processes, automate tasks, and provide valuable insights into performance.

3. Collaborative

RevOps should be collaborative and work well with others across the company, including sales, marketing, and customer success teams. They should be able to work across different departments to identify and resolve issues and ensure that everyone is aligned with the company's revenue goals.

4. Agile and Adaptable

Finally, a great RevOps leader needs to be agile, able to work quickly and efficiently, and has a sharp attention to detail. There can often be a lot of curveballs in RevOps, so finding someone who can pivot their strategies and tactics as needed to ensure that the company is always moving towards its revenue goals is critical.

5. Strategic & Thoughtful

At any moment, your RevOps person is getting pulled in a hundred different directions, with requests coming in from various business units. The right RevOps leader is able to assess the requirements and business impact of those requests, prioritizing and documenting projects and isn't afraid to say "no" or "not right now".

What Does a RevOps Leader Look for in a CRO?

Just like you’re evaluating RevOps candidates to see if they’re the best fit, the same is happening as they interview. Ops leaders are looking for certain factors before deciding which CRO to work under. Here are some qualities that will ensure your RevOps leader can thrive under your management:

1. Provide Career Growth Paths

According to our Wizard of Ops’ 2022 Ops Compensation Survey , 44.7% of RevOps pros left their previous role to pursue an opportunity with more career growth. What this tells us is that RevOps pros are looking for opportunities to be challenged, heard, and given strategic assignments, or at least be included in those conversations. They also desire recognition for their contributions and a chance to continue learning and growing in their roles. As a CRO, it's critical you provide these opportunities to reduce turnover and keep your operations efficient.

2. Understand the RevOps Role

While fully understanding what RevOps does day-to-day can be a big ask, effective CROs should be able to understand high-level the type of activities they are responsible for managing in order to provide appropriate support and coaching. A CRO with a full understanding of the value that RevOps brings to the table can be particularly valuable when they need to push back on a request or explain why a project may require more time and resources. A tool like Arovy can also help ensure that the CRO and broader leadership team have a clear understanding of the work the RevOps team is managing on a daily basis.

3. Provide RevOps with the Resources They Need

Sales and customer success leaders all know the technologies and resources they need to successfully hit their goals. RevOps are no different. While they manage the broader GTM tech stack, make sure to ask them what they need to help with their day to day operations. You’ll likely find they need entirely different tools.

Conclusion: Help Your RevOps Lead Seamlessly Manage Change Across Your GTM Teams

The relationship between the CRO and RevOps is critical to the success of any organization. By aligning on metrics and goals, communicating effectively, and leveraging the unique skills and strengths of each team across the company, the dynamic duo of CROs and RevOps can improve overall performance. Ultimately, organizational change is required for RevOps to work, and support from the executive level is essential. Change is never easy, but there are ways to make it easier - and that’s Arovy’s mission. Our change management platform empowers them to improve process, communication, and documentation. See why Arovy is becoming a must-have technology for RevOps leaders. Try it free today.