Guide
Apr 06, 2021
The global pandemic exposed a need for more visibility into how businesses are generating revenue. Discover how four revenue leaders are using intelligent revenue operations to maintain consistent growth throughout any situation.
No matter the industry or business model, revenue and growth are a top priority for leaders at every company. Throughout the pandemic, maintaining consistent growth became a global challenge, and one in five organizations was caught completely unprepared to adapt revenue strategies, according to the 2021 Xactly State of Global Enterprise Sales Performance survey.
But not every business struggled. And those that were able to navigate the ups and downs with agility had one thing in common: they all embraced intelligent revenue operations to better align their organizations and make decisions that generated revenue in the present and created positive outcomes in the future.
Four successful revenue leaders shared their learnings and how Intelligent Revenue operations is transforming the way they think about revenue and planning.
1. Bring Your Revenue Functions Together
Andy MacMillan, CEO, UserTesting
Finding the right path forward was difficult for many organizations when the pandemic hit. Especially when teams are siloed and misaligned. When different teams have competing priorities, it’s even more challenging to determine what actions to take to adjust your plans and goals.
One of the first things UserTesting did when the pandemic hit was to reorganize all of their internal revenue functions onto one team. As a result, they were able to better align across the entire organization. Their newly created strategic revenue operations team had in-depth company, pricing, and go-to-market knowledge, which was critical in guiding decision making and staying on track to hit UserTesting’s goals.
2. Align Your Entire Organization Around the Same Revenue Outcomes
Chris Hays, Chief Revenue Officer, ZoomInfo
One of the biggest challenges organizations face is misalignment between internal departments. While you’re aiming for the same objective—closing deals—your individual goals may not be the same. Sales is aiming for meetings booked and deals won, revenue operations is working towards profitable revenue, and marketing is striving for leads.
All of these initiatives work up to the same goal, but are each of those teams operating in the most efficient, revenue-driven way possible?
Aligning teams internally around the most profitable processes will focus your entire organization around driving revenue, rather than operating in silos to hit their targets. Marketing can focus on bringing in the highest quality leads, while sales and revenue operations prioritize deals most likely to close and with the highest profitability.
At ZoomInfo, Chief Revenue Officer Chris Hays reorganized his sales, revenue, and marketing operations teams to better align them around priorities and goals. The result? Together, the company became more efficient and was able to create more value for their customers and internally at ZoomInfo.
3. Growth Should be Fueled Intelligently
Oleg Rogynskyy, Founder & CEO, People.ai
Many businesses’ approach to revenue and growth before the COVID-19 pandemic was to achieve it at all costs, regardless of the resources required. Since the pandemic, revenue leaders are realizing that not all revenue is created equally.
To adapt to changing selling conditions and continuously grow, you must focus on spending your limited resources more efficiently and minimizing the costs to generate revenue. That requires an entirely new way of thinking about revenue that allows you to identify the steps to take now that will positively impact your results two or three quarters from now.
At People.ai, Founder and CEO Oleg Rogynskyy lead his company to help organizations maintain growth throughout the pandemic. What they found was that the businesses that fared the best throughout the past year and a half were those that aligned their entire selling and revenue-driving priorities at any given time.
4. Not All Revenue is Created Equally
Jamie Anderson, Chief Revenue Officer, Xactly
The global pandemic exposed a need for deeper visibility into how revenue is generated across your entire business and agility to change course when disruptions occur. As a result, it’s showing leaders that not all revenue is created equally, nor is all revenue beneficial.
In today’s fast-changing selling environments, you need to be able to not only examine if you’re using resources most effectively and if your incentives are driving the right sales behaviors. You must be able to quickly identify the differences between good and bad revenue streams and make changes that drive positive outcomes now and in the future.
At Xactly, we call that Intelligent Revenue.
Guide
Jun 16, 2021
Why a RevOps Mindset Depends on Accurate Sales Forecasting
Uncovering the Power of Intelligent Revenue
Intelligent Revenue uses your data and artificial intelligence to give you a better understanding of where your organization stands and which levers to pull to make strategic adjustments. With a more holistic view into how your company is generating revenue, you can better align your entire organization around outcomes that drive growth and revenue now and build momentum that carries into the future.
For ZoomInfo and People.ai, using the Xactly Intelligent Revenue Platform made navigating through the pandemic much easier. Using the platform, both companies analyzed performance, uncover leading indicators, and identify the actions they needed to take to drive consistent revenue growth.
To learn more, download the guide "10 Data Sources Every Sales Forecast Needs."
