Revenue Operations

CHAPTER 4Lead a Modern Business That Aligns Marketing, Sales, and Service

Growth Levers Across Executive Functions

Leadership must empower and endorse transformation of the commercial model. It's imperative that we unify marketing, sales, and service into one revenue team (though this does not automatically mean consolidation on the org chart, as we'll see in chapter 5). It's also integral to becoming more digital, data driven, and accountable.

“The two biggest headwinds for Revenue Operations are active championship from the CEO and creating cultural incentives to break down the organizational, budget and technology silos that divide people,” according to Corey Torrence, a managing director of Blue Ridge Partners who has led over a dozen Revenue Operations transformations.

Other experts also stress the importance of top-down leadership to Revenue Operations success. Sales leaders must find ways to unlock the untapped value potential of critical but underperforming systems that support selling like CRM, according to Bob Kelly, the CEO of the Sales Management Associations. “Leadership must do their part to make this transformation happen. Right now, 95% of sales managers and practitioners cite the lack of management encouragement to adopt these technologies as a big part of the problem,” warns Kelly.

Torrence's second headwind, the lack of cultural incentives to break down silos, reflects the failure of management to identify how so many organizations have failed to recognize ...