Revenue Operations

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

Prioritize Actions That Will Generate Short- and Long-Term Value

The Smart Actions outlined in chapter 11 create short- and long-term value. They generate short-term financial gains by reducing leakage, improving sales performance, and eliminating waste, while also stacking to generate higher, longer-term returns on your technology, data, and selling infrastructure assets. Smart Actions also create longer-term value by building out an operating system for scalable and sustainable growth at lower cost. These activities are strategic growth investments that change customer behavior in ways that generate future revenues, cash flow, pricing power, and profits.

The challenge comes in proving impact to justify funding and investment. You must overcome a few common obstacles, if you want to build a financial case for taking Smart Actions to connect the dots across your growth technology ecosystem.

First, remember that Smart Actions span functions. Finding a single established budget and owner for cross-functional initiatives is a challenge. Teamwork, sharing, and coordination must exist to gain funding, or the initiative will fall back into organizational, technology, and data silos. Often it's easier to purchase senseless or illogical solutions that fit within an existing budget than to acquire a smart, cost-effective solution that spans many budgets.

Second, conventional measures of sales and marketing ...