RevOps Trends and Best Practices for B2B Startups in 2024
Balance "Not doing enough" and "Boiling the Ocean"
Founders and sellers at startups are given generic RevOps advice all the time:
“...a data driven approach to customer acquisition…”
“...leverage AI and other systems to automate manual sales and marketing activities…”
“...focus on building a repeatable and scalable process…”
This all sounds great, but you can easily spend too much time and money on tools and processes that nobody uses or follows.
It begs the question, how do you strike the balance between not doing enough and boiling the ocean with tooling, processes, and GTM KPI metric tracking at your company’s stage?
I surveyed startup RevOps experts to answer this question and share other key insights to founders and sellers.
Here’s what they had to say:
What does “good” look like in terms of RevOps processes and systems for a seed stage B2B company?
Takeaways:
Use your CRM as the system of record
Track and report relevant KPIs
Record closed-lost details
Keep it simple
In the words of the experts:
"Establishing foundational systems and GTM processes that are scalable and flexible, or in other words, 'Keep It Simple'. This typically includes a basic CRM setup to manage prospect and customer relationships, a simple sales pipeline management tool, and initial analytics capabilities to track and measure KPIs and business metrics, such as customer acquisition costs, sales cycle length, velocity, growth, and conversion rates. The focus is on building a streamlined, holistic, efficient approach that supports rapid testing and iteration of revenue and customer journey strategies."
-Leore Spira, director of RevOps, Blink Ops
"Focus on having a CRM that’s capturing activities, meetings, and deals. Get in the habit of using the CRM as home base when you’re communicating about deals, leads and forecasting. Create a unified go-to-market goal, and focus on building trust across leadership. "
-Jacki Leahy - Fractional RevOps advisor
"Your priority at this stage is selection of a CRM and to begin using that to store sales data. If you can start here, you will have a better foundation than most. Most seed stage companies have founder-led sales, and so most of the valuable sales data is in their inbox. It is fine if the founder lives more in their email than the CRM, but there should be syncing from those sales conversations to the CRM, where basic lead data and pipeline stages are defined."
If you do not do this you will have conversations fall through the cracks and miss out on deals.
You should focus on recording closed/lost data in free text so that you can store signals and objections from the market (lost to competitor X, for what reason). This data will be a goldmine for Sales, Marketing, and Product to understand the buyer's perspective on your business and offer."
-Josh Lamb, Director of Business Systems, DNSFilter
How does this definition of “good” change by the time the company is at the series A stage? Series B?
Takeaways:
Additional sophistication through integration and automation to simplify workflows of your GTM team
More advanced data tracking and analysis by customer segment and stage in the buying process
In the words of the experts:
"Series A: "Good" RevOps involves more sophisticated systems integration, including marketing automation platforms and more advanced CRM functionalities. Processes should now support a growing team, requiring enhanced data visibility and reporting capabilities to inform strategic decisions. It's also crucial to start segmenting customers and refining customer journey mapping (according to ABX methodology) to improve targeting, scoring and personalization.
Series B: A robust RevOps team and systems that fully integrate sales, marketing, and customer success. This might include advanced data analytics platforms, AI-driven insights for predictive revenue forecasting, and enhanced cross-functional alignment. The processes should support international expansion if relevant (implementing land and expand strategy), and there should be clear data governance and compliance protocols, particularly for companies in regulated industries."
-Leore Spira, director of RevOps, Blink Ops
"Once you move to the Series A/B stage, we start to want to balance measuring metrics with customer obsession. How do you ensure that your sellers and supporters have the structure they need to scale appropriately, while still maintaining a customer journey that is friendly and functional to those most important in the process? This is the fundamental underlying truth to any good RevOps system for companies at that stage."
-Seamus Ruiz-Earle, CEO - Carabiner Group
"You have clear definitions of ICP, persona, and exit criteria for each stage. Go-to-market team is aligned on definitions of Lead, MQL, SQL, SAL and any applicable acronyms to describe your process. You’re capturing and reporting on data in such a way that you can be confident that a cash injection will be gasoline on a functional engine."
-Jacki Leahy - Fractional RevOps advisor
What are the minimum RevOps processes and systems a founder doing founder-led sales to acquire their first customers should have in place?
Takeaways:
Get a CRM and use it
Record customer feedback
Have a way to respond to inbound requests
Identify your ICP, and have a way to find leads within this ICP
In the words of the experts:
"-A process in place to receive feedback from customers. This will allow companies to understand how they are impacting a customer pain point and ensure product development continues in the correct direction.
-A process in place to identify Product Market Fit. Has the Product been tested and feedback received that is of a good sample size to show that the product is solving a pain point that is scalable and not only something for a small sample size of specific companies.
-Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) has been identified. Without ICP company will not be able to truly scale with the next stages of investments"
-Bryant Krieger, Founder & CEO at Optimi5e
"At the inception stage, when founders are directly involved in sales, essential RevOps elements include building the foundations with a holistic process and implementing a basic CRM tool to track all customer interactions and revenue activities. Additionally, setting up simple dashboards for monitoring key metrics like lead generation sources, revenue pipeline stages, and customer feedback can provide crucial insights for refining the product and revenue (customer-centric) approach."
Leore Spira, director of RevOps, Blink Ops.
"Anything that works! Focus on building relationships and getting intros of course! Tools like Hubspot, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Clay and Apollo can get you equipped and organized as you secure your first 3-5 customers."
-Jacki Leahy - Fractional RevOps advisor
"During the founder-led stage you should choose carefully your CRM as it will be the cornerstone to your sales operations. Soon you will have many integrations connected here so you must have a solid single source of truth."
At a bare minimum, in 2024 you should have:
-A leading sales CRM with relevant pipeline stages and email sync
-Sales call recording automatically posted to the relevant opportunity
-Good list hygiene, including the ability to attribute leads to a source such as trade show, website etc
-Identification of website visitors
-Alerting to new "hand-raisers". Contact us form, demo request."
-Josh Lamb, Director of Business Systems, DNSFilter
How do these minimum RevOps processes and systems change once the company makes their first sales hires?
Takeaways:
Good data hygiene in your CRM is even more critical
Define each stage in the typical customer journey so that new hires can repeat successful sales
In the words of the experts:
"Once the first sales hires are on board, it's critical to establish structured sales processes, standardized sales pitch decks, and training materials to ensure consistency and effectiveness in sales efforts. The CRM system might be expanded to include more detailed tracking of sales activities and performance analytics. This is also a good time to implement regular sales forecasting and performance review meetings to align team efforts and goals."
-Leore Spira, director of RevOps, Blink Ops
"For sales processes to be successful and scalable, they need to be measurable. Founder led sales have to transition into playbooks and process when you hire your first sales teams, and your systems will need to modify to fit those structures as well."
-Seamus Ruiz-Earle, CEO - Carabiner Group
"Your first sales hires should focus on building a customer journey that’s repeatable. How do they find out about your company? How do they evaluate your solution? What needs to happen before and after they sign on to work with you? For each stage, make sure you’re capturing the pieces of data you need before moving onto the next step."
Jacki Leahy - Fractional RevOps advisor
"The biggest shift is that sales now becomes a "multi-player" game. Early on you want to lock in more rigidity in your CRM so that you can ensure good data hygiene. You will thank yourself 6 months - 1 year down the line that this was something you put effort towards."
-Josh Lamb, Director of Business Systems, DNSFilter
What are the most impactful RevOps mistakes early stage B2B companies make before bringing in a third party or in-house RevOps expert?
Takeaways:
Buying excess tools that the teams don’t use
Implementing too complex of processes that the teams don’t follow
Not having clean data in the CRM
In the words of the experts:
"Spending on GTM technology without a leader to lead the alignment between business needs and systems. Generally it leads to inefficient systems that cost more than they return."
-Bryant Krieger, Founder & CEO at Optimi5e
"Underestimating the Importance of Clean Data: Many early-stage companies fail to establish strict data entry protocols, which leads to inaccurate data that can skew insights and decisions.
Overcomplicating Processes: Implementing too complex systems or processes that the team cannot efficiently use or does not fully need at their stage can waste resources and reduce agility.
Neglecting Integration: Failing to ensure that RevOps systems communicate seamlessly with each other can lead to inefficiencies and data silos that hinder growth."
-Leore Spira, director of RevOps, Blink Ops
"Going overly complex and overly investing in systems far too early. You don’t need 75 tools as a Series A company, you need 10 tools that are well implemented and integrated into your entire go-to-market strategy."
-Seamus Ruiz-Earle, CEO - Carabiner Group
"Excel Fiefdoms! It’s so easy for early stage operators to get into the bad habit of wanting to control their world in a spreadsheet - the problem is that their data may or may not match what another department is working with, and there comes a time when their system breaks and nothing has been captured in the CRM."
Jacki Leahy - Fractional RevOps advisor
What emerging trends or developments do you see in the field of RevOps, and how might they impact startups?
Takeaways:
Though once only possible for later stage companies, startups can use AI for RevOps workflows
Prospect and customer data is becoming more accessible and actionable
In the words of the experts:
"-AI and Machine Learning: The adoption of AI tools for predictive analytics is increasing, enhancing lead scoring, revenue forecasting, and customer behavior prediction and health management.
-Increased Emphasis on Customer Success: Integrating customer success more deeply into the RevOps framework to boost retention and lifetime value.
-Data Privacy and Compliance: As regulations tighten globally, more startups are prioritizing compliant data management practices within their RevOps strategies."
-Leore Spira, director of RevOps, Blink Ops
"The affordability and accessibility of data and engagement tools! Quality data used to be a high barrier to entry with Zoominfo being the only reliable game in town; likewise for Salesloft/Outreach/Groove. While the legacy companies transform into monolith platforms, the good news is that scrappy tools like Apollo and Clay are making it possible to get up and running with much more ease in the past."
-Jacki Leahy - Fractional RevOps advisor
"There are 3 trends I see emerging in early 2024:
1. The use of AI is exploding as it is for other departments. I expect to see tools that take the place of a RevOps Analyst (which typically would not be affordable to seed and series A companies)
2. Tools which enforce better standardization and visualization of the sales process. Rattle and Sweep are promising tools here.
3. Better use of existing data. We have passed through SaaS Winter, and companies are looking now to shore up their internal processes so that they can fix holes in their funnel, have improved confidence in metrics, and make better decisions."
-Josh Lamb, Director of Business Systems, DNSFilter
Final thoughts
Your short term business goals should determine the demand gen and sales activities you do and experiments you run as you refine your GTM motion. Only after you determine “what needs to be done” can you design the tools to use, the team you build, and processes you need to follow to ensure you’re effective and efficient.
Investing in RevOps workflows should be accretive to your business, not burdensome. If you’re worried about striking the right balance between not doing enough and boiling the ocean but aren’t ready to make a full-time RevOps hire, consider bringing in a consultant or fractional RevOps agency to provide a perspective on what’s appropriate for your stage.
Lastly, I’d like to send a HUGE thank you to the following RevOps experts for contributing to this edition of the Startup Sales Newsletter:
Bryant Krieger, Founder & CEO, Optimi5e
Leore Spira, Director of RevOps, Blink Ops
Seamus Ruiz-Earle, CEO, Carabiner Group
Cheryl Evans
Jacki Leahy, Fractional RevOps advisor
Josh Lamb, Director of Business Systems, DNSFilter