The three customer-facing teams—marketing, sales, and customer success—in your business-to-business (B2B) organization all play an important part in the customer lifecycle. Each department has its own tools, processes, and people and is responsible for different aspects of the B2B customer journey. For example, marketing attracts and nurtures leads and then hands them off to sales, which is responsible for turning those prospects into customers. Then, rounding off the customer journey, the customer success team onboards new customers and answers any questions they have after purchase.
But siloing these tasks, platforms, and workflows disrupts the flow of an efficient customer lifecycle. When these teams aren’t aligned and working together to acquire new business, retain existing customers, and achieve organization-wide growth goals, they can miss the mark.
Revenue operations (RevOps) is a new way of approaching the customer lifecycle. Under a RevOps framework, B2B companies unify the customer journey under the RevOps umbrella, align customer-facing teams, and ensure customers have a positive experience that leaves them wanting more—all contributing to sustainable, long-term growth.
The Rise of RevOps
RevOps is in the business of transforming the culture of revenue growth for B2B companies. It is designed to unify customer-facing teams under the same revenue and growth goals by aligning processes, platforms, and people across these departments. A revenue operations strategy ensures that marketing, sales, and customer success teams are communicating and collaborating to unlock the full growth potential of a business.
And it works. According to research conducted by Forrester, companies that aligned people, processes, and technology among their marketing and sales teams increased their revenue growth by 36%, growing revenue up to 3x faster than businesses that haven’t deployed a RevOps strategy.
More and more companies are seeing the value of revenue operations and its ability to impact the customer journey, both by aligning customer-facing teams and by optimizing the customer lifecycle.
RevOps & the Customer Lifecycle
Since acquiring new business and retaining existing customers increases revenue and growth, one of the primary functions of RevOps is to manage and optimize the customer lifecycle. From the time a new lead is attracted to the post-sale relationship, RevOps seeks to improve the customer experience.
By tracking all touchpoints across the customer lifecycle, automating processes, analyzing customer data, and identifying bottlenecks, RevOps creates a unified lifecycle for all customer-facing teams and contributes to each stage of the customer journey.
Let’s take a closer look, stage by stage, at how RevOps integrates with the customer lifecycle.
Stage 1: Attracting & Acquiring Customers
Attracting the right customers starts with knowing your ideal prospects—their demographics, interests, pain points, industry, and more. RevOps manages customer information, streamlines marketing operations, and incorporates marketing automation technology so your B2B marketers have everything they need to build data-driven digital marketing campaigns that grab the attention of your target audience.
Customer relationship management (CRM) platforms like HubSpot or Salesforce also fall under the RevOps umbrella. With CRM software and lead management programs with lead scoring and lead generation features, you can prioritize acquiring the right leads and start converting them into customers.
Stage 2: Converting Leads into Customers
RevOps creates tailored processes for customer-facing teams to successfully convert leads into customers. With the use of marketing automation software, implementation of sales enablement strategies, and analysis of data on prospect behavior, revenue operations helps to seamlessly transition prospects into customers.
Buyers move through the customer lifecycle stages on their own timeline. Your customer-facing teams have to be prepared to meet them where they are at any time. There’s where RevOps comes in: When a lead is ready to become a customer, RevOps is ready to pull the trigger and send them onto the onboarding stage—thanks to the right technology stack and streamlined operational processes.
Stage 3: Onboarding & Nurturing Customers
The RevOps team is dedicated to making sure new customers feel welcomed and informed. Using personalized automation techniques based on customer data, RevOps ensures the new customer has a positive experience with your B2B products or services. The revenue operations team works with marketing, sales, and customer success to ensure new customers have access to the training, resources, and support they need to be onboarded quickly and efficiently.
This personalized attention is foundational to a positive customer experience. Thanks to the care and attention to detail, customer lifetime value increases, as does customer loyalty.
Stage 4: Retaining & Expanding Customer Relationships
A key aspect of RevOps is retaining existing customers by curating a positive customer experience, streamlining the customer journey, and expanding the customer-company relationship.
RevOps not only develops new revenue-generating operations but also supports existing revenue streams, so building long-term relationships with customers and securing repeat business is critically important. From referral programs and brand promotion to ongoing support and upsell/cross-sell opportunities, RevOps works to keep these revenue streams flowing.
Benefits of Integrating RevOps & the Customer Lifecycle
RevOps is designed to acquire new buyers, retain existing customers, and optimize the customer experience to increase customer lifetime value (CLTV)—one of the most significant paths to revenue growth for a B2B company. If your organization adopts a revenue operations framework, you can see these benefits across the customer lifecycle.
Improved Visibility & Alignment Across Departments
RevOps ensures any teams contributing to the customer lifecycle are aligned, are working together, and have everything they need to create a positive customer experience.
When customer-facing teams work together to optimize the customer journey and achieve organizational growth goals, they are held accountable. RevOps ensures these teams collaborate on handoff processes, technology and customer data, and the assignment of responsibilities to improve visibility across departments.
By aligning marketing, sales, and customer success teams and improving visibility and communication, RevOps creates a more efficient and effective customer journey.
Enhanced Customer Experience & Satisfaction
Since RevOps streamlines the processes, workflows, and technology stack for all customer-facing teams, marketing, sales, and customer success can focus on attending to customer needs, improving the customer experience, and turning customers into lifelong evangelists of your brand.
The RevOps team identifies bottlenecks in the customer lifecycle, analyzes customer data and feedback, and finds ways to improve the customer lifecycle—from the details to the big picture. Each improvement contributes to a more positive customer experience, leading to satisfied customers, higher retention rates, and increased customer loyalty.
RevOps is designed to make sure the customer experience is compelling, delightful, and beneficial.
Optimized Revenue Generation & Growth Opportunities
B2B companies are increasingly turning to revenue as a metric for success and creating long-term growth goals.
Throughout the customer lifecycle, RevOps tracks data and analyzes the effectiveness of every stage. It focuses on optimizing the customer journey for revenue generation and growth, which requires strategic planning and data-driven decision-making.
RevOps not only manages and analyzes customer/revenue data but also develops a streamlined, sustainable strategy for revenue generation and growth. With RevOps data, you can make accurate revenue predictions, determine the effectiveness of existing strategies, and find additional opportunities for increased revenue growth.
Increased Operational Efficiency & Effectiveness
A revenue operations framework increases the operational efficiency and effectiveness of your B2B customer lifecycle in three areas: people, platforms, and processes.
RevOps ensures people on your customer-facing teams have what they need to succeed and are working together to achieve your revenue goals. The revenue operations team also finds the platforms, such as CRM programs, marketing automation software, and lead scoring tools, that best support and streamline the work of these customer-facing teams. Finally, RevOps increases the operational efficiency of processes and workflows within and among marketing, sales, and customer success to ensure each stage of the customer lifecycle is handled smoothly and efficiently.
Optimize the Customer Lifecycle with RevOps at OneIMS
Revenue operations can help your B2B company optimize the customer lifecycle at every stage, from knowing your audience and finding the right leads to ensuring a positive onboarding experience and turning customers into lifelong advocates of your brand.
At OneIMS, our team of RevOps experts is ready to help your organization design and implement a revenue operations framework that maximizes your growth potential and transforms your business into a revenue-generating machine—all while creating a plan to optimize the customer lifecycle. We have a long history of working with companies in a variety of industries to develop innovative and data-driven marketing solutions, and we pride ourselves on producing measurable and sustainable results that lead to long-term growth.
But you don’t have to take our word for it. View testimonials from our clients and read our blog to get an idea of our training, experience, and track record of success.
Are you ready to transform the customer experience and achieve your revenue goals? Schedule a consultation with us today to get started.
