Keep It Simple, How to Use Automation the Right Way as You Scale

Building automations is easier than ever. For RevOps, this is an opportunity to move toward simplicity. But if you start automating too early, you can slow down your revenue engine as you scale. Hear from James McArthur, Director of RevOps at Nue.io, and Jen Igartua, CEO at Go Nimbly, as they discuss how to tackle automation by keeping it simple.

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“When your company doubles in size, you’re running a new company.” - Jen Igartua

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Building automations today is crazy easy. It’s natural for RevOps at early-stage startups to try to get ahead of the curve by automating their revenue processes immediately. Before they know it, they’ve over-engineered their CRM and CPQ and blocked their ability to innovate and scale. Avoid this fate by taking a step back and planning ahead for the company you will be, not the company you are today.

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Avoid automating too early

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Every time your company doubles in size, you’re running a new company. Systems and processes that are custom-coded too early will quickly become misaligned with business objectives. 

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RevOps teams that over-automate their GTM and revenue processes while they’re still small end up creating more work for themselves. Soon, they’ll have to scrap everything. This stalls company innovation with new products or pricing. 

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Unfortunately, RevOps will become a roadblock–the fastest way to lose your seat at the table. Instead of automating flows, focus on surviving, figuring out how to sell, and establishing foundational processes. You can’t build a perfect scalable system when your startup is in a high-growth phase.

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Stay scrappy and scale as you grow

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I wouldn’t trust a product team without a roadmap. Why are we trusting RevOps teams without a roadmap? - Jen Igartua

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Scaling affects your customers so tackle process automations with a project management philosophy. Think at least 6 if not 18 months out. Remember that most systems, like CRM and CPQ implementations, will take you 12+ months to install and get right. 

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It’s perfectly fine to be scrappy until you have at least 2 RevOps people to coordinate, 10 sales reps, and can afford a GTM system. Google Sheets, Slack, and the cheap or free version of Salesforce and HubSpot will do the job. As you grow, you can add on software components. This philosophy will keep you agile and able to pivot to accommodate new products and initiatives.

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Nail your core processes

“When you’re building flows, do it in a way that someone with no knowledge of your system can come in, see it, and understand what’s going on.” - James McArthur

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Keep your core processes in mind as you start automating your tech stack. This includes handoffs, which are very scalable, like how a customer moves from marketing to sales, SDR to AE, and AE to CSM. Your automations should create a peak experience for customers from the first interaction to onboarding.

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As RevOps, your job is to get data from the customer to your team and from your team back to the customer. These processes directly translate to a sale. A lot of flows don’t have to be complicated, but they do require management. It’s important to understand the difference between what’s necessary and what’s nice to have.

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Keep it simple

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Avoid over-engineering your revenue processes, including buying a CPQ, too early. Unwinding complex revenue flows and processes is very expensive, so keep it simple, document your work, and have fun!

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