RevOps leadership is the central axis for business context

“Building a visionary company requires one percent vision and 99 percent alignment.” – Jim Collins

I had two conversations earlier this week, and one of the recurring themes was business context.  As I thought more about it, I realized that this is one of the major challenges I’ve come across in many organizations.  How do you develop a shared business context and language across the organization to align everyone with the same goals, objectives, and strategies?  It’s especially important across sales, marketing, finance, and customer success to align our GTM strategy, systems, processes, and technology.  The RevOps leader sits right at the center of this issue, and ensuring a common business context is critical to their role.

The Importance of Business Context

Why is it important to have a shared business context? A couple of reasons jump to the top of the list.

Shared Understanding: Having a shared business context ensures that all teams understand the company’s goals and business environment.  This understanding supports better alignment, collaboration, and decision-making.

Efficient Planning & Execution: If each department understands the business context, it becomes easier to plan and execute strategies that are in line with the company's overall objectives.

Performance Measurement & Improvement: A shared business context enables teams to measure performance more accurately and identify areas for improvement.  I can’t stress enough how important this is – make sure that all teams are measuring things the same way.  I’ve encountered many organizations that might be using the same term but with different definitions in various departments (e.g., conversion rate, SQL).

Key Shared Business Context Areas

What are some of the key items that you want to have shared business context on?

Sales Funnel: This is a visual metaphor for the path a potential customer takes to become a customer. Departments need a shared understanding of the stages of the sales funnel and what actions and conversions occur at each stage.  Ensuring that everyone understands what each stage is (how you enter a stage, how you exit a stage) is essential.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV): This is the total revenue that a business can reasonably expect from a single customer account. It considers a customer's revenue value and compares that number to the company's predicted customer lifespan. Ensuring everyone is aware of CLTV and its calculation is essential in allocating investment resources.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This is the cost associated with convincing a potential customer to buy a product or service, including research, marketing, and accessibility costs.  What are the total costs that go in here?  Does everyone agree on the methodology? 

The Cost of Misalignment

As I mentioned, the RevOps leader is the one who brings the teams together and ensures a common business context and set of terms.  What can go wrong if you don’t do this? 

Misalignment in Strategy: If teams don't have the same understanding of the key terms, their strategies may not align. For instance, if the marketing team understands the sales funnel differently from the RevOps team, they might target the wrong customers at the wrong stage.

Inefficient Resource Use: If CLTV and CAC are not understood in the same way across departments, the company might spend too much on acquiring less profitable customers.  As one of my Wharton professors recently said at an alumni talk – it’s the rows, not the columns (focus on customer profitability, not product profitability). 

Inaccurate Performance Measurement: With different definitions, teams might measure their performance using different standards, leading to inaccurate or incomparable results.  How many meetings have you been in where everyone brings in their own numbers and you have to now try and reconcile what’s been done?

Final Thoughts

This topic came up in a conversation with a startup founder and a VC this week so I thought it was timely to discuss. Remember, to maximize efficiency and revenue, it's crucial for all departments in a business to be on the same page and work towards shared objectives. This starts with a shared business context and a common understanding of the key terms and metrics. 

As always – ending with Ollie (he wanted to go for a ride in the Porsche – but he’s not going to fit!).  Hope your summer is off to a good start!

Best,

Steve