I’m a fundamental believer if you do not operate under the guise of a framework, you are operating blindly. Here’s my overarching framework for Revenue Operations.
Revenue Operations Impact Framework
At the center of the two rings one could imagine the word company would be placed there. I believe at the center of these two rings should be the customer. Why? The customer is at the center of everything we do. The inner ring represents the buyer’s or user’s journey. Delight the customer and everything else is taken care of. The outer ring represents the Go To Market journey. These four pillars represent the key ingredients for the company to ensure a smooth journey for the customer.
There are fundamental tenets one brings to the table each and every single day.
Revenue Operations responsibilities vary wide and far. They also differ from company to company. They differ throughout each stage of a company’s maturity. The following tenets serve as a foundational baseline from which to operate from. The core ROI tenets are:
Feelings count more than functionality; focus on the end user experience through clear communication, thoughtful planning, and enablement. Make sure your partners feel you have their back.
Tenets. Live them, love them, abide by them
Revenue Operators often talk about process as key to their success. One of my favorite quotes is from W. Edwards Demming…
If you can’t describe something as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing
Okay… but what exactly makes a good process? Well that’s what this post is all about. The process of creating a process.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned at Amazon is that anyone, anywhere can bring with them is the concept of mechanisms and working backwards. I’m going to go a bit deep here as it should serve as background knowledge for you to develop processes to truly help your business scale. A mechanism, or Complete Process (CP), is a complete, closed loop process that consists of seven key components. The next seven sections will cover specific steps in which an operator can use to build a Complete Process. The goal is to drive change within the business and the following tools will allow you to do so.
The seven steps are
Use the results of inspection to improve the mechanism. Iterate on the tool, adoption, inspection methodologies, and the inputs and outputs.
Work backwards from a clear and concise problem statement as you design and implement your mechanism. Avoid using this one mechanism to try solving multiple business problems. These processes should be singularly focused if possible.
Start with articulating a clear problem statement with the intent of solving the right problem. The output of your process should solve this particular problem. It’s far too easy to solve the wrong problem. As you develop multiple processes, remember that multiple processes often work together. One clear example of this is that one output from one process may be the input to another. For example, the output from a process called “Lead Capture” will be the input to a process called “Lead Routing”.
If you need help, try to answer the following questions:
Articulate the desired outcome by resolving the business challenge. What results do you want to deliver, on an ongoing basis, from the mechanism(s) you design to address your business challenge?
If you need help, try to answer the following questions:
The tool is the structure that you need people to adopt in order to turn your controllable inputs into desired outputs. The tool is the focal point of your Complete Process and is built using organizational levers (discussed in detail below). Tools can be simple ("teams will create tenets to align thinking across parties, and guide future decisions"), or complex ("we will create software to automate critical business decisions"). Once you’ve landed on a workable starting strategy for your tool, decide how you will use the various organizational levers to deliver the outputs you want.
Need help building a tool? Ask yourself these questions:
Examples:
Consider who will need to adopt your tools in order to produce the desired outcomes. Involve them early and frequently to ensure buy in. Teams and individuals will need to adopt and use your tool in order for the mechanism to turn your controllable inputs into desired outputs.
The influence and effort required to gain adoption for your tool from the necessary teams and individuals will vary each time you build a mechanism. Begin this work early in your mechanism-building process by identifying the specific groups you will need to bring onboard.
Assess what their barriers to adoption may be and brainstorm ways to address them. Assembling the correct combination of organizational levers during this step is crucial in gaining adoption of your tool. For instance, adopting a new way to measure a business result (Metrics) will only get you so far if you are not sharing that metric with the right stakeholders (Message Flow) and if stakeholders are not aligned on its importance (Goals).
Not all individuals in a stakeholder group are the same. You may need to use multiple tactics with a stakeholder group to address multiple concerns, including the "what’s in it for me" message for each of the stakeholders.
Key questions:
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