RevOps’ Role in the “New World”

“What’s RevOps’ role in the ‘new world’?”

I was asked this question twice last week. And it’s a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about recently, given my work with early-stage startups and the pace and magnitude of change currently taking place.

Like many others have noted, the “new world” is being defined as:

1. Expensive money leading to less VC investment

2. Less VC investment shifting focus to profitability over growth (not a bad thing)

3. All the while, AI is having a real-world impact on GTM

Operationally, the impact of these conditions means:

1. Operating leaner, more efficient GTM teams

2. Greater emphasis on “good” unit economics

3. Traditional sales motions becoming less effective (outbound)

4. Key pipeline metrics moving in the wrong direction (e.g., longer sales cycles due to increased scrutiny on SaaS spend, added stakeholders)

5. Exploring non-traditional and/or cheaper sales motions (network-led, partners, etc.)

6. Greater focus on delivering real value to customers

7. Greater focus on maximising revenue from existing customers

8. Leveraging AI and automation to plug the people gaps and drive efficiency

9. Shifting thinking from “sales enablement” to “buyer enablement” (and what that means across the revenue funnel)

10. Recalibrating assumptions of your model and the definition of success across GTM

So, how does the new world translate to RevOps? And how can RevOps help navigate these changes? At its core, RevOps is about driving alignment and efficiency through people, process, and systems. It’s about doing more with less. That means:

• Whether your ARR target is £10m or £1m;

• Whether you’re employing 20 sales reps or 2;

• Whether you’re generating 1000 leads or 100;

• Whether your NRR is 110% or 90%;

RevOps’ objective remains the same. What changes is the areas of focus; the parts of GTM where RevOps resource should be deployed.

In this new world, RevOps should be prioritising:

1. Optimising the post-sale customer journey. It’s difficult to measure the success of your customers without knowing what to expect from them. And only tracking expansion and renewal pipelines isn’t good enough. (I wrote a short blog post about this here)

2. Refining your ICP to focus the efforts of Marketing and Sales; ensure only “good” prospects are being targeted. Build lead/account lists to reflect this. Steer GTM efforts toward high probability, high-value outcomes.

3. Revisiting qualification framework. What applies today that didn’t apply before? What should be uncovered upstream to ensure a successful customer onboarding experience? Make sure your qualification framework is current.

4. Revisiting lifecycle stages, definitions, and entry/exit criteria. Should an opportunity be considered as such in the context of the new world? What about the criteria used to determine MQLs? As with your qualification framework, make sure this is current

5. Doubling down on GTM process optimisation. Make sure processes like lead routing, speed-to-lead, and SDR>AE handovers are flawless. The same rigour should be applied across the funnel (and especially at handover points between people/teams)

6. Avoiding operational debt by maintaining platform integrations. Make sure there’s no loss of fidelity (e.g., leads, intent signals) between platforms. Now is not the time to ignore your Hubspot <> Salesforce error notifications.

7. Testing and implementing AI where it makes sense. While it may not be applicable to all yet, AI is not going anywhere. As RevOps, we need to consider where AI can make an impact today within our GTM orgs and test where appropriate (e.g., prospecting, documentation, co-piloting, etc.).

8. Aligning team incentives. Should you continue targeting Marketing on MQLs or should you move to a pipeline-based incentive? Now is the time to review the incentive structure to ensure you’re driving the right behaviours.

9. Delivering relevant and timely insights to guide decision making. With greater emphasis placed on profitability, it’s more important than ever to flag what’s working and what’s not.

It could be argued that all of these things should be done as BAU anyway - which is true. But now that the “T2D3” blinders are off, now is the time to recalibrate your GTM operations with profitability as the desired outcome.