While attending the RAMP 2019 conference in Boston last week (shout-out to InsightSquared for hosting a great event!) I was immersed in the zeitgeist surrounding Revenue Ops. As this new movement gains momentum it occurred to me that there will be many ripples as commercial enterprises finally consolidate and optimize an expanded set of shared operational and enablement services.
Some the most stimulating ideas for me came from the SiriusDecisions framing of the Revenue Ops charter and how the Demand Unit Waterfall fits into this new structure. If you are not familiar with this latest evolution of the demand waterfall it is worth taking a deeper look. The core concept here is that complex B2B sales target virtually assembled “buying groups” consisting of multiple buyers in varying decision-making roles. (“Nothing new there” say all of us old sales dogs). What is new is the ability of Marketers to detect and identify the buyers in a particular group much earlier in the engagement cycle based on advances in the analytics and intelligence tools now available. In the past leads were passed to sales as individual contacts, with little or no context around what the buying group or committee might be. We heard many people last week declare that the individual lead as we know it is dead, and a much richer profile of very early stage opportunities is the wave of the future.
Sales Methodologies all contain frameworks, tools, templates and best practices for Sales to discover the extended team and power base during their opportunity pursuits. With much deeper insights available during the “up-stream” Marketing Funnel Sales teams are able to spend less time understanding the structure of the buying committee and focus more on selling value to power. This represents a true kick-start to the sales campaign, with the promise of accelerated time to close and increased sales productivity.
Given this new model I suggest it is also time to declare the death of Sales Methodology as we have known it for the last thirty years! The next generation, Revenue Methodology, will provide an integrated engagement model from initial identification of demand units, through the initial customer acquisition sales cycle, and across the entire customer lifecycle of implementation, renewal, cross-sell, and upsell. The role of Revenue Ops in gathering and updating buyer insights extends from one-time buying committees to dynamic profiles that evolve over time both as relationships mature and buyers change roles and companies over time. Imagine one set of dynamic org charts augmented with buyer preferences, relationships, and CBI’s. One current heat map of the competitive footprint in the account and prioritized opportunities for marketing and sales to pursue. One set of Revenue Plays that include not just sales tactics and activities, but all of the intelligence, content and aircover from a truly united revenue team. Combining this next generation framework with the new wave of Agile, Situational selling that informs strategy based on the profile of any given demand unit and opportunity, and the path forward is clear. Our job is to go boldly where none have gone before…the next generation is already in play!