Management models evolve. Modern selling requires levels of speed, accountability, visibility, and teamwork that are unmanageable in a traditional functional organization model. The need to get sales, marketing and customer support organizations working as one revenue team is an existential issue for every B2B organization. This book explains the solution: a Revenue Operations model. It overcomes the traditional barriers to cooperation between sales and marketing and customer service by combining all these functions in one business unit, under a single leader called the Chief Revenue Officer, or CXO. The goal of a Revenue Operations model is to better align the sales teams, assets, systems, and processes around a coherent set of customer and company goals to accelerate revenue, profit, and value growth.

The majority of Boards are pushing their CEOs to pursue business model transformation to a cloud, subscription, or recurring revenue model. In response, they are aligning their sales, marketing and CX Teams around the customer to generate the growth and net recurring revenues needed to make the successful transition without significant disruptions to cash flow and profit growth. Aligning sales, marketing, and customer success teams has also become fundamental to generating the growth, customer experience, and net recurring revenues needed to scale or transition to a cloud business model with limited capital. This growing relationship between revenue growth and firm value has made Revenue Operations a critical issue with Private Equity investors who need faster organic revenue growth to justify purchase price multiples that exceed 13 times EBITDA. 

The book describes six core elements to a revenue operations model, and provides Chief Revenue Officers, CMO’s, CXO’s, sales managers, and other sales growth leaders a roadmap for aligning their sales teams, operations, systems, and processes to grow sales and expand customer lifetime value.

STEPHEN DIORIO is the Managing Director of the Revenue Enablement Institute, and a Senior Fellow at the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative. He is a leading authority in go-to-market transformation, sales and marketing performance management, and revenue operations. Over the past 30 years, Stephen has helped over 100 organizations like American Express, DuPont, IBM, Intuit, Ricoh, UPS, and U.S. Bank to reengineer their selling strategies, technology portfolios, and revenue operations to accelerate growth and become more data-driven, digital, and accountable. He is a widely published analyst at Forbes and has authored several books on commercial transformation including Beyond e: How Technology is Transforming Sales and Marketing Strategy.

CHRIS HUMMEL is a Managing Director at the Revenue Enablement Institute leading CXO programs. Chris is a global CXO with a proven track record of accelerating revenue and adapting to changes in the buying and selling environment. He has successfully led sales, marketing, product, and digital teams at world-class companies like Oracle, SAP, Schneider Electric, Siemens and United Rentals. Over the past 25 years he has developed 360-degrees of experience driving every aspect of the commercial system—as a GM, F500 CMO and Chief Commercial Officer responsible for growth—while also leading the core marketing operations, field marketing, sales operations and customer care teams that support them.

FORWARD

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION – Growth Is Good

PART I: REVENUE OPERATIONS, A SYSTEM FOR GROWTH

CHAPTER 1: A Bold Approach to Take Control of the Entire Revenue Cycle

Introducing Revenue Operations, a New Way to Create Sustainable, Scalable Growth

The Financial Link Between Firm Value and Growth

The Challenges of Growth in the 21^st Century: Customers, Disruptions and Fragmentation

CHAPTER 2: The Value and Impact of Revenue Operations

How Revenue Operations Creates Value

Eight Ways Revenue Operations Creates Financial Value

The Change Management Hurdle

PART II: A MANAGEMENT SYSTEM TO ALIGN YOUR REVENUE TEAMS

CHAPTER 3: The Six Pillars of the Management System

Commercial Leadership that Unifies Marketing, Sales, and Service

Consolidated Operations that Support All Growth-related Functions

Commercial Architecture that Maximizes the Return on Selling Assets

Commercial Insights Built upon Customer Engagement and Seller Activity Data

Commercial Enablement Capabilities that Turn Your Technology into a “Force Multiplier”

Best Practices for Managing Data, Technology, Content, and Intellectual Property Assets

CHAPTER 4: Leadership That Aligns Sales, Marketing and Service

Growth Levers across Executive Functions

A New Generation of Growth Leader Emerges

CHAPTER 5: Three Leadership Models: The Tsar, the Federation and the Chief of Staff

The Tsar: Putting a “CXO” in Charge of Revenue Teams

The Federation: An Alliance Among Leadership Functions

The Chief of Staff: A Revenue Operations “Rock Star”

CASE STUDY: Enhancing Value Across the Company at GHX

PART III: AN OPERATING SYSTEM FOR CONECTING TECHNOLOGY, DATA, PROCESSES, AND TEAMS

CHAPTER 6: Assemble the Nine Building Blocks of Revenue Operations

What Does an Operating System for Business Look Like?

The Building Blocks of the Revenue Operating System (ROS)

The Team That Connects the Most Dots Wins

CHAPTER 7: Connect Your Data, Technology and Channels to Acquire More Customers

Building Block #1: Revenue Enablement: CRM, sales enablement, content and learning technologies that support selling

Building Block #2: Channel Optimization: selling channels that engage customers in human interactions

Building Block #3: Customer Facing Technology: the “owned” digital selling infrastructure that engage customers digitally

CHAPTER 8: Blend Data into Insights that Inform Selling Actions, Conversations and Decisions in Real-Time

Building Block #4: Revenue Intelligence: Manage and Measure Financial Value

Building Block #5: Engagement Data Hub: Leverage Advanced Analytics to Connect Growth Assets to Value

Building Block #6: Customer Intelligence:  Use Customer Data to Inform Decisions, Actions and Conversations

CHAPTER 9: Extract More Revenue and Margins from Your Teams and Resources

Building Block #7: Talent Development: Attract, Develop and Retain Commercial Talent

Building Block #8: Resource Optimization: Allocate People, Time and Effort Against Opportunities

Building Block #9: Revenue Enhancement: Increase Revenue Yield with Packaging, Pricing and Personalized Offers

CHAPTER 10: Tune the Operating System to Get Maximum Performance

Digitize Planning Processes to Improve Agility in Deploying Your Resources

Use Analytics to Make Better Predictions, Forecasts and Investment Decisions

Adopt Advanced Modeling Techniques to Evaluate More Scenarios and to Build Consensus

PART IV: HOW TO GET STARTED AND DRIVE IMPACT

CHAPTER 11: Six Smart Actions to Deliver Growth

Get Better Visibility into the Revenue Cycle

Simplify The Selling Workflow

Share Marketing Insights with Frontline Sellers

Develop and Retain High Performing Selling Talent

Make Selling Channels More Effective

Streamline and Personalize the Selling Content Supply Chain

CHAPTER 12: Big or Small: Tailor Revenue Operations to Work for Your Business

How Revenue Operations Can Grow Revenues, Profits and Value in Your Business

Actions Enterprise Leaders Should Be Prioritizing

Achieving Hyper-growth for Small Companies

CHAPTER 13: Activity to Impact: Make the Business Case for Your Growth System

Prioritize the Actions that Will Generate Short- and Long-Term Value

A Financially Valid Framework for Connecting Smart Actions to Firm Value: The Revenue Value Chain

Use the Revenue Value Chain to Create Budgets, Earn Buy-In and Take Action

APPENDIX: PRACTICAL TOOLS TO IMPLEMENT REVENUE OPERATIONS

Glossary

A Simple Way to Assess the Current Maturity of Your System of Growth

Citations

Index