Lost in Translation, part 1: talking to executives about RevOps processes

RevOps team members often have a hard time explaining the value of what they do to their executives. It’s hard to understand (and even harder to directly measure) the impact, even though all RevOps processes rely on the foundational data layers. Just as only builders think about the foundation of a house while others see the fancy fittings that sit on top of it, only the RevOps data quality team appreciates the foundation beneath all the fancy sales and marketing activities.

Operations: focused on the details, but what about data quality?

Operations is, by design, focused on the details. Nothing works without the basic pieces in place. While someone using an analog watch might like the way it looks and that it keeps time, few of them will know how each of the cogs in the watch works. Similarly, executives want to know what the tools and processes are doing for them, but not how each one works.

Framing RevOps data quality for executive conversations

So how does the hands-on Ops team and their directors translate their work into a language that executives will understand?

Whether you’re at a public or private company, executives are reporting to the board of directors and/or the shareholders. That means executives must ask a few major questions:

• How does what you do enable the company to operate?
• How does what you do improve the bottom line?
• How does what you do limit costs?

Executives are focused on the big picture. To communicate the value of your work and your team, you need to speak in those terms: how is what you’re doing addressing these three areas?

Enabling the company to operate more efficiently

You might think first of all the small ways that Ops helps ensure things run smoothly: Clean data, data enrichment, and data segmentation so that leads get assigned correctly. List loading apps so that end users can load lists themselves using approved processes without needing hands-on help from the operations team. ABM apps so sales teams can create target lists without needing to wait for operations to get to it.

But think bigger picture when you’re talking to your executives, and talk about results.

“Our clean data, enrichment, and segmentation processes have been streamlined so that reps get leads assigned to them in 20 minutes instead of three days.” (speed-to-lead)

“By inferring data from the leads we already have and using metro area data, we’ve been able to mine our own databases so that our invitee lists to events for metro areas are, on average, 23% larger, enabling our events to be more effective.” (improved outreach)

“Our automated list loading processes mean that the lead records from events are loaded as soon as our marketing team gets them, which means an average follow-up time of four hours instead of two weeks.” (speed-to-lead)

“Because ABM lists are self-serve, as soon as marketing has an idea for a program, they can query our database themselves using the no-code platform, giving them instant insight into whether the target group has the characteristics they’re looking for and if it’s big enough, instead of waiting for the ops team to provide the query for them. And they can update their query as often and in as many ways as they want.” (improved outreach)

You get the idea. Focus on what helps the team work better, what enables individuals to self-serve as needed, and what helps the company de-silo to produce better, faster, or more accurate results.

Improving the bottom line through RevOps data quality

Huh? Me? I’m not in sales or finance. I don’t have a budget (that’s above my pay grade). What can I do to improve the bottom line?

Lots.

The most expensive resource for almost all companies is employees. That means that if you can make teams more efficient, remove obstacles, or enable your company to do more with a smaller team, then you’ve made a difference.

I don’t mean you should be looking for ways to get rid of your colleagues; this is not Game of Thrones. But it does mean that if you can remove manual, time-consuming work and replace it with faster, automated processes, you’ve enabled the team members who were doing the manual work to focus on more complex, higher-value projects.

Examples of saving people time and effort

“It used to be a manual process for a team member to load each list into our CRM. Now they drag and drop it into an app, and cleaning, standardizing, deduplication, and enrichment happen automatically, even before those lists make it to the CRM. They now use that time to create new, compelling programs to increase our demand gen efforts. We created five more programs per month after implementing list load than we did before.”

“We used to have 30% of our leads end up in the ‘default’ bucket for lead assignments because the data wasn’t clean enough. Each of those leads would need to be manually assigned. Now with automated cleaning, enriching, and routing, our accuracy is 98% and only 2% need to be manually routed. This is saving us hours every day. We’ve cut the routing team from ten people to two (which covers vacations), and the other eight people are now working on lead outreach and data analysis.”

“Because of our dirty data we used to have to manually create reports which we’d then have to manually adjust because the segmentation always had problems. Now our data is clean, so instead of taking time to manually clean data, we are spending time analyzing the data itself. Our data analysts are now actually analysts instead of glorified data cleaners. We’ve discovered a new potential market segment we can pursue based on the data.”

When you’re saving people time and effort, you’re also saving the company money. If you discover new segments you can sell to or uncovered processes that accelerate sales, you’ve gained the company opportunities.

Limiting costs with effective data processes

Saving time also saves money, but there are also ways you can limit costs, both in people and tools. If you used to hire a contractor to load lists in your event season, now automated list loading can let your own team drag and drop lists into an app, saving the cost of that contractor. If you used to have ten different point tools to cover all the various processes that your team needed, now you can have a platform that does all of those processes–and more–without having to buy something else. If you used to have four data vendors and were locked into multiple contracts because each one had its own niche, now you can use an automated enrichment waterfall that gets you the best matches across vendors. If you used to have to buy data first and see if it had anything useful for you only after you paid, now you can do automated acquisition and see where your database needs to be updated or appended before you buy.

Examples of processes and their benefits

“If we consolidated our processes into a data automation platform, we would decrease the number of tools from twelve to three. This would enable us to spend less time maintaining multiple systems, less time troubleshooting when those systems conflict, and more time creating more processes to respond to changing business requirements. We estimate it would save eight to sixteen hours per month and $20k per year in vendor costs.”

“If we used an enrichment waterfall, we wouldn’t need to manage three contracts with different vendors, we could easily change focus when our business needs change, and we could maximize matches rather than having to guess which vendor is providing the best information across our worldwide team. We also would not need to manage all the fields for all the vendors in our CRM, so our CRM administrator would save substantial time in not having to create new fields every time we change vendors.”

“If we used automated acquisition, we could clearly see where our database was deficient and not have to buy data we already have in order to see if we need updates. We estimate a 50% savings in data enrichment costs.”

There’s a lot you can do.

Keep your head up: communicating the big picture

While ops professionals tend to focus on the details because that is where their daily work is, when communicating to their executives, they need to look at the big picture. Executives will want to know what’s in it for them. While ops folks very clearly aren’t sales folks, the more they understand that they are pitching to their executives and need to ‘sell’ the ideas, the better off they will be.

Next time you have a meeting with your management, keep the three areas already outlined above in mind as you formulate how you will talk to them:

• How does what you do enable the company to operate?
• How does what you do improve the bottom line?
• How does what you do limit costs?

Show them what’s in it for them (and you) and you’ll have much more success.

For a deeper dive into how to effectively communicate the importance of RevOps data quality and how it can transform your organization, check out the Authoritative guide to RevOps data quality. This ebook breaks down the critical components of maintaining clear, actionable data and offers practical insights into automating and optimizing your RevOps processes. Whether you’re looking to enable smoother operations, improve the bottom line, or limit costs, this guide provides the knowledge and strategies you need to succeed.

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