The

RevOps
Framework
We believe the world has changed – Marketing,
Sales, and Customer Success need to operate
across the full funnel to drive growth.

We call this Revenue Operations.

Written by Marko Savic, Founder/CEO at FunnelCake

Published May 2017 • getfunnelcake.com

 the revops framework

Table of Contents
Executive Summary 3

Overview 4

Key Benefits 5

Align everyone 8

Create focus 12

Simplify everything 15

Getting Started 20

Outcomes 25

2
 the revops framework

Executive
Summary
RevOps is a new organizational model that drives
growth through operational efficiency across the
customer lifecycle.

RevOps unifies four functions from silos in the org

chart: Operations, Enablement, Insights, and Tools.

RevOps works on internal needs, freeing up

Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success to focus
on the customer.

RevOps uses alignment, focus, and simplification

to drive revenue growth by increasing capacity;
reducing ramp time; and improving core metrics like
value, volume, velocity, and conversion rates.

about this framework

Over the past twelve months, FunnelCake interviewed over a hundred B2B Marketing,
Sales, and Customer Success leaders.

We used this data to create the definitive framework for Revenue Operations – a new
department that manages full funnel operations across the customer lifecycle.

3
 the revops framework

What is
RevOps?
Revenue Operations, or RevOps, is a new department
that manages full funnel operations across Marketing,
Sales, and Customer Success.

RevOps brings together four areas of responsibility

from departmental silos: Operations, Enablement,
Insights, and Tools.

4
 the revops framework

RevOps has one job – to drive growth through

operational efficiency across the customer lifecycle.

This holistic approach has three key benefits:

align everyone
RevOps keeps all departments on the same page by treating Marketing, Sales,
and Customer Success as their stakeholders. This ensures every initiative has a
measurable impact on the full funnel from awareness to expansion. When teams
are aligned, they generate 38% more revenue in 27% less time.

create focus
RevOps enables Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success to focus on their goals
by taking on operational and technical overhead. This focuses go-to-market
teams on their KPIs — generating leads, closing deals, and expanding accounts.

simplify everything
RevOps identifies and removes roadblocks in the customer lifecycle, enabling
Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success to move faster. A simple, predictable
model gives you confidence to invest in high growth efforts, like expanding your
Sales teams.

These benefits are more than surface level, they drive

business outcomes.

5
 the revops framework

Today’s operating
model is a legacy
T echnology changed the way customers buy. Depending on who you ask,
anywhere from 57% to 75% of the buyer journey is completed before pros-
pects get in contact with Sales – and with SaaS models, retaining and expanding
the customer base drives the bottom line.

Customer
Marketing Sales
Success

Marketing Ops Sales Ops Customer Ops

Most business processes haven’t evolved with their In this legacy model, performance is measured
customers – Marketing, Sales, and Customer Suc- through hand-offs, like MQL-to-SQL conversion
cess only interact with customers at defined stages of rates. Each department has their own team members
the customer lifecycle. They’re discrete departments, handling operations, enablement, insights, and
handing off the customer from one team to the next. tools. This typically leads to misalignment, duplica-
tion of effort, and a disconnect between strategy
and business outcomes.

6
 the revops framework

The RevOps Model

R
evOps connects Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success across the
customer lifecycle, breaking down internal silos to increase alignment,
focus, and simplicity.

Sales Customer Success

Marketing

Revenue Operations

In the new world, Marketing is involved Customer Success now sees which opportunities
throughout the customer lifecycle, from awareness to are coming their way before the customer makes
expansion. Marketing programs not only drive new their initial purchase, comparing new customers to
business, but also cross-sell, up-sell opportunities, existing ones and focusing on the most likely expan-
and churn prevention through customer marketing. sion opportunities.

Sales is now involved at the earliest stages of the RevOps links Marketing, Sales, and Customer
customer lifecycle, influencing awareness and brand Success operations across the customer lifecycle to
through social selling activities and Sales initiated drive efficiency and keep all teams accountable to
outbound campaigns. revenue. Beyond this, RevOps builds alignment with
other stakeholders such as Finance, Product, and the
Executive team.

7
 the revops framework

RevOps aligns
everyone

RevOps keeps Marketing, Sales, and Customer

Success aligned around the customer – unifying
metrics, tech ownership, and change management.

8
 the revops framework

C ustomers can have a flawless set of interactions

with your company when Marketing, Sales,
and Customer Success are aligned. According to
Finance, Product, and the Executive team – under-
stands core business metrics and how to use them.

SiriusDecisions, this alignment can drive up to 36%

of your growth. HubSpot has similar numbers from
Credibility and trust
2015: aligned teams close 38% more deals.
“At SnapApp, Sales and Marketing sit together.”
says Seth Lieberman, CEO of SnapApp. “The Sales
Alignment requires agreement on metrics, credibility
and Marketing teams are within an earshot of each
and trust between teams, defined ownership of the
other. That physical proximity creates intimacy of
tech stack, and change management.
knowledge and connection, which is an important
part of building trust.”
Agreement on metrics
data vs . gut feelings
In the legacy model each team has their own met-
In the absence of data, gut feelings are often used
rics. These metrics have various levels of under-
to debate what works and what doesn't. A great
standing across the business. Marketing metrics,
Insights team provides the data so you can move the
such as MQL, are widely accepted but not widely
conversation from gut feelings to fact-based argu-
understood; Sales metrics, like pipeline coverage,
ments. Credible decisions can be made when work-
tend to be well defined and operationalized; Cus-
ing from facts, enabling strategic business decisions
tomer Success typically re-uses Sales metrics in lieu
to form the foundation for commitments.
of well-defined metrics for expansion.

Different teams can use the same metric in their own vanity metrics vs . insights
ways, one example is estimated annual recurring Vanity metrics such as clicks, opens, and Sales activ-
revenue (eARR). With different definitions, it’s impos- ity data, are easy to get and freely available. Vanity
sible to rely on the data to make sound decisions, metrics are great for informing tactical program de-
like the profit and loss floor to hire new reps. sign, but are useless for operational decisions and
strategic insights about the business.
“Duplicate measurement efforts across Sales and
Marketing is distracting and can lead to divergent RevOps provides operational metrics that sup-
strategies,” says Dan Shaw, VP of Sales at Fiix. “You port business operations and decisions – such as
need a single source of truth to measure, baseline, showing how Sales and Marketing tactics work in
and optimize the revenue engine.” concert to drive revenue, detailed segment analysis,
efficiency metrics like marginal CAC, and identifying
RevOps owns metrics from end-to-end, ensuring constraints in your funnel.
everyone in Marketing, Sales, Success – as well as

9
 the revops framework

Ownership of the stack

we have so many tools
Fifteen years ago technologies like CRM and
Marketing Automation were new. Today, over
5,000 MarTech tools are available. In our inter-
views with B2B SaaS companies, we found they
used an average of 32 tools in their Sales and
Marketing stack.

The tech stack has become impossible to manage.

Multiple tools may do the same job, complex
integrations break regularly, and the wild west
of self-service tools leaves unknown amounts of
customer data everywhere.

no one owns the stack

It's a challenge because no one owns the stack.
Twenty years ago this would have been IT's do-
main – today it's common for Marketing to own

“It’s not magic, it’s software. the budget, procurement, and management of
these systems. Sales and Customer Success can
Software won’t replace your have their own systems teams as well, leading to
problems; it won’t replace the multiple owners for one CRM implementation.

deficiencies in your company With RevOps, a single team owns the tech stack
– it can actually hinder your used by Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success.

reps abilities to sell more.” Accountability and ownership go hand-in-hand.

RevOps manages a close relationship with IT to
ensure tools meet security and data management
– Kenny Goldman requirements, while changes can be made quick-
Sales & Customer Success at Helpful.com ly, responding to the needs of Market, Sales, and
Customer Success in real time.

10
 the revops framework

Change Management
“In the early days when we made changes to our tools, they only impacted a
couple of people,” says Mike Griebenow, Revenue Operations Manager at
Vidyard. “Today, when we roll out changes they impact half our company – 170
people. There’s a new scale of testing and due diligence required to make sure
you don’t negatively impact the Sales organization.”

tools are shared by every team

Look at how these vastly different tools are used by Every tool change creates a cascading impact
every team across the customer lifecycle: across the team, roll-outs require project and change
management, testing, and training to be successful.
• Social media is used to build your brand, provide
customer support, and find new prospects. Beyond managing changes – the volume of special-
ized tools creates huge gaps in end-user training.
• CRM is used to report on lead conversion Great enablement helps every team drive revenue
through revenue contribution, manage new busi- through the best use of these tools, maximizing ROI
ness pipeline, and everything from renewals to for expensive MarTech systems.
advocate programs.
“New tools are coming out all the time.” says Jacqui
• Product usage data is used to drive marketing Murphy, VP Marketing at Auvik Networks. “Each
programs, focus Sales on high-quality leads, time a new team member joins the company, it takes
and alert your team when a customer is at risk. hours just to configure their tech stack, not to mention
training them on how to use all the tools.”

“Your teams need to trust each other, they

need to know that they’re working towards
a common goal, and they need to find ways
to be supportive and collaborative.”

– Lex Friedman
Chief Revenue Officer, Midroll
11
 the revops framework

RevOps
creates focus

RevOps has four areas of responsibility: Operations,

Enablement, Insights, and Tools. This creates focus
by separating the management of internal and external
stakeholders.

12
 the revops framework

RevOps has four functions:

Operations, Enablement,
Insights, and Tools.
Operations management
Operations management works across the business roles responsibilities
at macro- and micro-levels. Operations manage- • Sales Operations • Strategy
ment works on everything from strategic business • Marketing • Business process
objectives to tactical program design; managing Operations innovation
resources to ensure every outcome aligns with the • Project • Project and change
needs of the business. Operations management can Management management
start with distributed roles, such as Sales Ops or • Business Analyst • Cross-functional
collaboration
Marketing Ops, and become specialized over time.
• Sales planning and
compensation

Enablement team
Sales Enablement removes friction from your reps, roles responsibilities
turning an ordinary Sales team into a high veloc- • Sales Enablement • Onboarding
ity, high throughput deal factory. RevOps takes • Learning • Coaching
Enablement to the next level – bringing Enablement Management • Continuous training
practices to Marketing and Customer Success. Each • Performance • Professional
Management development
enablement effort has compounding effects on your
whole business, and you’ll see reps closing more • Content access and
utilization
business, faster, with fewer resources.

13
 the revops framework

Insights team
The Insights team gives superpowers to everyone roles responsibilities
from a Marketing Program Manager to your Board. • Business Analyst • Data management
From day-to-day insights to strategic analysis, this • Data Scientist • Data access
team will give you confidence in the decisions you’re • Database • Operational insights
making (and the quality of data to back them up). Developer • Strategic insights

Tools team
The Tools team is responsible for all technology used roles responsibilities
by Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success – from • Systems • System
implementing CRM to social selling tools. The tools Administrator administration
team should have a deep understanding of CRM, • Software Developer • Technical solution
business processes, and technical capabilities. design
• Evaluation,
procurement, and
vision of the tech
stack
• Integration

When hiring for RevOps, look for seasoned Marketing,

Sales and Customer Success professionals.

RevOps team members should be analytical, technical,

and business-oriented; helping to close the gap between
current operations, tools, and business challenges.

14
 the revops framework

RevOps
simplifies
everything
Most companies have legacy org structures based
on how businesses were run twenty years ago. New
functions have been added into this structure over
time, creating leadership roles that are overly broad.

RevOps consolidates operations into one team to

simplify everything.

15
 the revops framework

The legacy model

creates problems.
This legacy challenge is evident in Sales leader-
ship. Should they be focused on managing teams
for enablement, insights, and tools if it comes at
the cost of helping their reps build and manage “Companies need more
their pipeline? than product and brand
You can see this in the problems created by the marketing. They need an
legacy model: expert in demand gen,
1. Department heads have direct reports with
building pipeline, and
skill-sets outside their own area of expertise, partnering with Sales.”
creating a lack of focus.
– Meagen Eisenberg
2. Duplicate roles in each department, with
Chief Marketing Officer at MongoDB
dotted line reporting relationships across the
organization, creating misalignment and un-
necessary complexity.

To grow fast, you need the right people in the right

organizational structure, focused on delivering
what the business needs.

“Sales reps are focused on hitting their number

every quarter.” says Jairaj Sounderrajan, Head
of Global Sales Operations at Twilio. “For them,
selling is essential – everything else is optional.”

16
 the revops framework

Legacy org chart

VP
VP VP Customer
Marketing Sales Success

Marketing Sales Customer

Ops Ops Ops
Customer
Demand Sales
Success
Gen Management
Marketing Sales Managers Customer
Tools Tools Tools
Product AEs / BDRs Customer
Marketing Support
Business Sales Customer
Analyst Enablement Marketing
Corp. Solution Professional
Comm. Engineers Services
Data Business
Manager Analyst
Field
Marketing

Org chart with RevOps

VP
VP VP Customer VP
Marketing Sales Success RevOps

Demand Sales Customer

Success Operations
Gen Management
Managers

Product AEs / BDRs Customer

Enablement
Marketing Support

Corp. Solution Professional

Insight
Comm. Engineers Services

Field
Tools
Marketing

17
 the revops framework

Key issues with the legacy org chart

management skills gap multiple everything

With siloed operations, each VP is responsible for With the siloed model, each team has their own set
their core departmental roles and operational roles. of operations, creating additional overhead across
This splits their focus: teams, and increasing friction points or opportunity
for conflict.
• External audiences – like generating leads, clos-
ing deals, and growing customers. With RevOps, instead of duplicating operational
roles, you can invest new headcount in specialized
• Internal audiences – like creating dashboards, Marketing or Sales roles, enabling the business to
implementing CRM changes, and training inter- move faster.
nal teams on how to use these tools.
This gets everyone on the same page, creating a
Let’s look at the CMO as an example. In the past, single source of truth across the organization – from
CMOs and VPs of Marketing were expected to accountability, to metrics, to strategic priorities.
master corporate marketing, product marketing,
field marketing, content marketing, and demand fuzzy reporting relationships
generation.
In the legacy model, reporting relationships are
anything but simple, with dotted line reporting that
Today we expect CMOs to be technology experts
reduces accountability.
in addition to everything else. Sure, you can find a
unicorn – see: Meagen Eisenberg – but they're rare.
RevOps simplifies reporting structures. Strategic de-
The same is true for our Sales and Customer Success
cisions can be made at the executive level, while the
leaders.
Operations, Enablement, Insights, and Tools teams
work with stakeholders from Demand Generation to
The RevOps model allows your CMO to leverage
Customer Success Managers.
RevOps' expertise to bring their vision for tech-en-
abled marketing to life. The entire executive team
benefits from revenue metrics that are consistent and
aligned to the business objectives.

18
 the revops framework

Who leads RevOps?

T he Chief Revenue Officer, or CRO, is an emerging role in the
technology industry. The CRO provides unified leadership
of Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and RevOps. In many
ways, the CRO is a natural leader for SaaS businesses, which
rely on recurring revenue models. In SaaS, the lines between
Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success are more intertwined
than other business models.

“The integration between

Marketing, Sales, and Customer
Success is critical – the CRO’s
role is to drive alignment
between these teams.”

– Mark Roberge
Previously Chief Revenue Officer at HubSpot

If you don’t have a CRO, RevOps can live under the Operations
or Marketing umbrella. This decision comes down to the needs
of your business and the skill-set of your leadership team.

CROs are new – according to LinkedIn job data, in the United

States there are roughly 4,100 CROs, 24,400 CMOs, and
43,000 COOs.

Almost half of CROs are in emerging tech companies, those

with 50-200 employees. Most CROs have been in the role for
less than 2 years.

19
 the revops framework

Getting started
with RevOps

RevOps can start in two ways: distributed capabilities

throughout your team, or specialized roles in a
department. The right way to start depends upon your
business model and company size.

20
 the revops framework

R evOps generally starts out as distributed

capabilities, with one person doing multiple
roles, for example:

• Sales Ops also does Enablement and Insights

• Demand Gen also doing Marketing Ops and

managing Tools

Eventually these responsibilities become dedicat-

ed roles and can be brought under the RevOps “Hire Ops as soon as you
umbrella as you scale. Consolidating usually can. 5-10 reps is when you
happens when communication and project man-
agement becomes sufficiently complex – usually
make the investment. If you
around 100 employees. can bring a systems person
on earlier, do it as one of
If you’re over one hundred employees, it’s likely
you have siloed Ops in your business already. the first 15 people in the
Changing this will require a leader who brings the company.”
Ops roles together and consolidates reporting
relationships. – Joe Gelata
VP Business Operations at Axonify
“When we got to around 75 employees, we rec-
ognized that we needed one source of truth for
data,” says Carol Leaman, CEO at Axonify. “At
that point we hired a VP of Business Operations.
Since creating that team, we have streamlined
our customer journey and data to derive key
insights, leading to a repeatable, scalable Sales
and Marketing experience.”

21
 the revops framework

Scaling RevOps roles

T here are two rules of thumb for when to hire: by company
size or number of Reps.

scaling by company size

Hire Insights and Tools roles, like analysts and systems admin-
istrators, at specific company milestones. Below we’re using
employee count as a proxy for need.

Insights, Consolidate into

Systems Admin Marketing Ops RevOps
# Employees
5 10 15 50 100
# Reps
Sales Ops
Enablement

scaling by sales team size

Hire Operations and Enablement roles, like Sales Ops, as soon
as you have 5-10 Sales reps. Add Enablement roles to the team
in a 10:1 ratio with the number of Sales reps.

22
 the revops framework

Signs you need

RevOps

There are common symptoms when you don’t have

a RevOps function – if you find the statements below
sound like your team, it likely means you’ve waited
too long to bring on RevOps.

23
 the revops framework

Common complaints before RevOps

“Our process is broken!” “MQLs are bullshit.”

Businesses evolve – new lead generation processes, The great war of Sales and Marketing alignment
territory changes, and new product lines all cause happens when each team has their own definition of
change management challenges. RevOps involves success – losing trust in the process. RevOps creates
all teams in creating new processes, creating training agreed-upon definitions for every metric, service
materials, roll-out plans, and collecting feedback to level agreements for handoff management, and
iterate changes. trains teams to ensure everyone is on the same page.

“We don’t know what’s “I can’t find anything in

working and what’s not...” Salesforce!”
It’s challenging to prove Marketing ROI, understand By bringing the enablement, insights, and tools
why deals are stalled, or get to the bottom of churn teams under one umbrella they can work together
issues. RevOps teams look holistically across the with Sales reps to optimize the system for data entry
business, helping you know what you don’t know – and analysis.
and finding ways to answer those questions.

“We have too many tools!” “Our data is a mess!”

RevOps consolidates the procurement, implemen- Even when we know what metrics we want to track,
tation, and management of tools under one team. the data isn’t always there (or accurate enough) to
This gives full visibility across the organization, saves answer critical business questions. “Data integrity
costs, and increases adoption of through training is always an issue. It creeps up on you,” says Joe
and enablement. Gelata, VP of Business Operations at Axonify “The
responsibility for clean data belongs to everyone
and RevOps guides the way.”

24
 the revops framework

RevOps drives
Growth
RevOps creates benefits for the Marketing, Sales, and
Customer Success – but more importantly RevOps
aligns the company around the customer.

RevOps helps you generate more revenue by

influencing key metrics: value, volume, velocity, and
conversion rates.

25
 the revops framework

“You’re responsible for optimizing

LTV, LTV:CAC, growing MRR –
that’s your basic data. Insights need
to go far beyond that.”

– Lena Shaw
Marketing & Growth at LeadGenius

RevOps has compounding effects on every part of LTV is a great example. You can use core metrics to
your business: Enablement helps your teams ramp focus on prospects that look like your highest value,
and adapt quickly; Insights helps your team focus on lowest churn customers – expanding customer base
the right opportunities; and right tools save time. faster and retaining revenue longer.

These improvements can feel small, but they benefit predictable growth
the reps you have today and the reps you will hire in RevOps brings predictability to your growth through
the future. Here are some benefits you’ll see: consistent, accurate measurement. You’ll have the
confidence to invest in new markets, new headcount,
increase revenue or new strategies – and be able to know early when
Carry capacity they’re working and when they’re not.
Through efficiency gains you can grow the amount
This could mean:
of revenue each rep can carry, increasing revenue
growth with fewer resources.
• Sales and Finance agree on how to use eARR to
measure sales rep profitability, or the profit and
Ramp time
loss required to support hiring a new rep.
Through better Enablement and onboarding, you
can reduce ramp time for new hires, such as SDRs • Customer Success and Product agree on how to
and AEs, scaling growth faster and shortening your identify revenue at risk due to product require-
rep payback period. ments.

Core metrics • Sales and Marketing agree on a new market

By increasing the key levers of growth – volume, segment to enter, such as a new vertical.
value, velocity, and conversion rates you’ll be able
to grow faster.

26
 the revops framework

“When Sales, Marketing, and

Customer Success understand
the unit economics of a business, respond to market changes
As your business grows it requires some big
they can work together towards changes, such as:

one common goal.” • CRM re-implementation

– Kyle Lacy • Restructuring your teams, territories, and

VP Marketing at Lessonly compensation models

• Introducing and launching new products

RevOps manages the internal change by

providing communication, training, and
project management to make transitions
seamless. This reduces your risk of losing
deals, losing staff, and losing time.

“That traditional funnel is where Marketing

was at the top, Sales is in the middle, and
Customer Success is at the bottom.” says
Hana Abaza, Head of Marketing at Shopify
Plus. “That doesn’t really work anymore –
the reality is that each of these teams kind-of
sit everywhere.”

27
 the revops framework

Conclusion
• RevOps is a new organizational model that drives
growth through operational efficiency across the
customer lifecycle.

• RevOps has four key areas of responsibility:

Operations, Enablement, Insights, and Tools.

• RevOps works internally, enabling Marketing,

Sales, and Customer Success to drive revenue.

• RevOps uses alignment, focus, and simplification

to drive revenue growth, help you invest in growth,
and respond to market changes faster.

28
FunnelCake is a RevOps platform
that tells you how to beat your
growth targets.
Connect Salesforce and FunnelCake to drive your RevOps
engine. FunnelCake identifies gaps between your pipeline and
your growth goals, then guides Marketing, Sales, and Customer
Success with actionable insights – like how many leads you need
to create, when you need to hire Sales reps to hit growth targets,
and red flag alerts on pipeline.

FunnelCake easily aligns your teams around revenue. Learn more

at getfunnelcake.com.

This document was written by Marko Savic. Special thanks to Dan Bruce, Christina
Ellwood, Debbie Qaqish, and Sam Trieu for editing.

Copyright 2017 FunnelCake Inc.