HubSpot Executive Chairman Brian Halligan wrote in a social post that for the year 2009, your product needed to be ten times better than your competition in order to succeed. As of 2019, however, your customer experience needs to be ten times better than your competition in order to succeed.
We all know that delivering delightful customer experiences is important, but when it comes to actually making that happen, the biggest challenges are all within your company. It comes down to how organized your customer-facing functions are, how you actually propel your internal processes, and how much alignment you have.
On the surface, silos can seem manageable. When teams are siloed, though, the gaps between departments become part of the customer experience. Without a clear owner, customer handoffs between teams are often painful and incomplete.
Having a leader who oversees and intentionally connects Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success operations can work to eliminate silos, bringing all of these teams into alignment.
That isn’t to say that change can’t happen without putting a singular person at the head of your RevOps organization, but what it does mean is this: In order for you to make change happen, you need to be acutely aware of your silos.
Think about how you organize either formally, through a reporting structure to an experienced operations leader, or informally, by establishing a regular operating cadence during which the leaders of these operations organizations can come together and make decisions.
What I’d love to learn is, how do you structure your RevOps functions and organizational chart?
In my work, I counsel clients to establish org charts based on teams of teams approach with team leaders/process owners being a team of their own to ensure agency wide alignment. Similar approach to what is described here, and essentially reducing how silos are insulated from each other (I don't think it's an either or approach, as orgs at scale typically need both silos and "open-floor plans" -- the secret sauce is in the integration.
I´m not yet in a position where I could decide about the structure, functions and org. chart but If I could contribute to it, I can see that there are silos in the operation creating firction between sales and operations so I would invite members or leaders of other areas to our operations team meetings and vice versa so together we can get a 360° perspective and structure the customer experience as a whole and not from the perspective of each department.
I am not yet in a posotion to make organizational structure decidions, I can however, recommend creating a cohesive flow of information by using an interactive communications software that captures all departments.
I am also the only RevOps person in my company which has around 50 emloyees and I work and report close to the CEO but also with the Leaders of Marketing, Sales and Customer Success Teams. I take part in all meetings of the three teams and of course our overall meeting of the whole B2B Team.
Curious about your observations after having a RevOps officer for nearly a year. Has the company realized any changes with respect to your Go-to Market approach?
At my company we started doing RevOps before we even knew what it was.
I work directly under the Director of Revenue, and the junior members of the BD team and Marketing team report to me. Our service team falls under a Director of Partnerships who also works directly under the Director of Revenue.
As RevOps and our Revenue Team grows I believe that RevOps will stay a fourth branch of the Revenue Team, along side the service/partnerships team and expanded sales and marketing teams.