- Throughout his career, Eddie Reynolds has seen for himself (and has shown others) how important RevOps is for equipping sales reps to close more deals — and the right ones.
- Using the information and resources that RevOps provides maximizes the effectiveness of your activities. Instead of making more calls, RevOps helps you make more effective calls and close more deals.
- By taking a look at each component of the sales process, you can identify key factors tied to needed improvements. Then, RevOps insights and sales leadership guidance can help you grow on both an individual and an organizational level.
Let’s face it: There’s nothing new under the sun. Whatever content you’re putting out into the world, chances are high that it’s been said and done before. But using the right tools and technology to strengthen yourself and your platform can set you apart and reel your audience in.
This principle holds true in the sales world as well.
I’m a firm believer that revenue operations (or RevOps, to those in the biz) can change the game for even the best sales reps.
Equipping salespeople with the tools and processes to make them more effective is critical. Teaching them to use those tools makes everyone better.
Eddie Reynolds knows this better than most. With his company Union Square Consulting, Eddie helps sales teams drive growth through refining their RevOps. I sat down with him on an episode of the INSIDE Inside Sales podcast to discuss outcomes versus activity and how RevOps supercharges your sales process. Let’s dig in.
Using the tools of the trade
Strengthening your RevOps all comes down to using your resources.
The best — and smartest — reps know that a great sales strategy is about quality over quantity. They know how to use data to build better lists and make better calls. And instead of simply increasing their call volume, they know they need to find the right people to call the first time.
When Eddie thinks about RevOps, he recalls his earliest days of sales, circa 20 years ago. He took strategic steps from the jump, starting with talking to the highest performers to understand which products were selling the best.
From there, he connected with an analyst at the company he worked for at the time, who helped him build a list of customers who met certain specific criteria. Meeting those criteria meant that the customers were the ideal potential buyers.
So Eddie was making fewer, better-targeted calls than his colleagues — and absolutely crushing his quota. (By over 500%!)
That analyst partnership and the data Eddie used to build rock-solid lists were his secret weapons.
Later on in his career, when working at Salesforce, Eddie had all the data and analytics he needed right at his fingertips. The systems and processes were locked in, and he knew instantly which decision-makers to call to close deals and consistently meet his quota.
An airtight RevOps system gives you a holistic 360-degree view that allows you to work the sales process as efficiently as possible. In-depth customer data lets sales reps spend more of their day actually selling rather than doing the dirty work of research, prep, or admin.
The power of RevOps lies in getting the information out of the systems. From gathering the data himself to implementing processes already in place, Eddie is living and breathing proof that the right RevOps strategy works — for your company and your reps.
Outcome > activity
At the end of the day, our goal in sales is to bring in more revenue. Having and using the right RevOps tools is one of the most important ways to achieve that goal.
But for Eddie, reaching quota is far more important than the specifics of time spent logged into Salesforce or the number of activities recorded. This is because RevOps is a means to an end; it’s a tool.
His challenge to sales reps is: When you’re prospecting, are you doing it as efficiently as possible?
Tools and processes exist to give salespeople an informed view of the prospect or customer. And it’s possible — though rare, in Eddie’s experience — for a rep to outperform without researching and making their messaging as relevant as possible.
If a high-performing rep isn’t using the RevOps tools or finding them effective, it’s time to reevaluate. Leadership should examine the tools they’re using to ensure that they provide a wealth of information to help reps do their job more efficiently.
Another way that leadership can make RevOps as effective as possible is through training. Sales reps are action-oriented, right? To them, a two- or three-day training might feel — at a glance — like a detraction from the work of actually selling. (Think of how much you could get done in those days!)
But Eddie reminds reps that if training could help you use RevOps systems well and sell better, they make a world of difference, even if you weren’t making calls and being traditionally “productive” during those two or three days.
Learning to leverage the power of RevOps will make you far more productive in the long run.
“You want to use the tools to drive the behavior that is going to produce the results in the organization that you’re seeking,” Eddie says.
That’s why Eddie doesn’t waste time worrying about activities tracked or account logins. His priority is results (and organizational effectiveness) through RevOpssystems.
RevOps at every level
Whatever tools and tech you use as an organization, the question you need to ask yourself is this: What is the most effective way to build a pipeline?
You might arrive at that answer in a number of different ways, like looking at your highest-performing reps and observing their best practices. From there, you should think about how you can replicate those processes organization-wide and make everyone more effective.
And if your team, as a whole, is underperforming, you’ve got two options: more activities, or more effective activities. RevOps helps you take the latter approach, but only if your reps are actually using the tools.
Outcomes are more important than activities tracked, yes — but your RevOps processes exist to help you achieve better outcomes.
Eddie recommends having set expectations about the minimum process-oriented RevOps activities. (Busy work and unrealistic checkboxes are the banes of many a sales rep’s existence.)
But beyond that minimum, the key benefit of RevOps is maximizing effectiveness at every stage in the sales cycle.
Many factors go into meeting sales quotas, not just the volume of calls a rep makes. Meeting-to-close rate. Length of the sales cycle. Average deal size. Conversion rate at each stage.
Focus on one factor in that sales cycle. Put your energy and resources toward improving what will increase your effectiveness most, fueled by the insights from RevOps and the guidance of sales leadership.
Think of it this way: Organizations invest in RevOps tools and technology because they want their reps to succeed. Your success and effectiveness as a sales rep not only increase the profitability of the company but also helps you make more money. (Wins all around!)
Reframe your RevOps activities not as just another to-do, but as a treasure trove of insights to help you grow your pipeline and close more deals.
