Increase Revenue Alignment to Achieve up to 15% Higher Profitability

It should come as no surprise that one of the major challenges faced by today’s modern marketer is around the alignment of sales, marketing, and the rest of the organization. Getting teams to work together, and moreover to focus upon a shared set of team-level goals, does not happen very often.

Unfortunately, this misalignment results in lost revenue for the business. At SiriusDecisions Summit that took place this week (May 6-9th), the research firm noted:

“Our research proves it over and over – organizations that maintain a focus on alignment achieve up to 19% faster revenue growth and up to 15% higher profitability”

SiriusDecisions calls for a new focus on Revenue Operations which comes about as a result of aligning marketing, sales, product, and customer success teams around common goals, processes, and technologies. How does SiriusDecisions look at alignment? Take a look at this slide from the event, presented by Dana Therrien and Kerry Cunningham.

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”

– Andrew Carnegie

While Bigtincan for Adobe positively impacts the overall revenue generation capabilities of an organization, it is only one piece of the solution.  As you consider this broader re-alignment be thoughtful and do the following:

• Be clear on why this is important for your business.
• Ensure that every team is clear on how their goals roll-up to achieving the broader vision.
• Review team goals across all revenue operation functions, not just at a team level.
• Identify any areas where team-level goals are contradictory and, in combination, will undercut your vision. Fix those.
• Now, at a team level, communicate how these help achieve the broader vision.
• Define the metrics and ensure all teams are using the same metrics from the same source of truth. Kerry states that “Data is the foundation for high-functioning revenue operations function, … It must be consistent across the organization.”
• Implement, measure, and repeat the above quarterly.

Revenue Operations, which includes capabilities such as Sales Enablement, is a concept that is here to stay. As Dana noted “Technology is disrupting us, and therefore, we must have the courage to disrupt ourselves.”

Not every business will be ready to commit to the broader Revenue Operations function. Those that are not should begin by aligning marketing and sales around a common set of goals and compensation-related rewards. This change alone will result in positive improvements for the business and provide a step in the right direction.