Aligning marketing, sales, and customer success teams to support your buyer or customer journey is a crucial strategy for any business. However, executing this alignment effectively presents significant challenges. In this article, we’ll explore the top five obstacles Revenue Operations (RevOps) teams face when bridging the gap between go-to-market (GTM) planning and execution.
1. CRM Limitations as a RevOps Roadblock
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms are their own kind of RevOps roadblock. They are great tools for structuring and maintaining data, and they enable the important work of keeping tabs on where opportunities are in the pipeline. What they can’t do, however, is capture and analyze data in complex ways.
RevOps leaders require a more robust way of viewing and digesting that information. They need data on territories, products, teams, capacity, and targets. They also need to view and manipulate this data in multiple ways: correlated, combined, and balanced. They need to understand the impact of industry taxonomies and account hierarchies. They also need the ability to examine data from a distance as well as at an account level.
Given the importance of having multiple views on customer data, many organizations resort to writing custom code in their CRMs to gain these views. When you have custom code, every time there is a change in a small detail, such as a new rep for routing, that custom code has to be manually updated. The more complex the go-to-market (GTM) strategy, and the more convoluted this updated process becomes.
Ultimately, RevOps leaders are realizing that while CRMs provide valuable customer data, they lack the flexibility and depth needed to manage complex GTM strategies.
Writing custom code in a CRM to execute your GTM means you will have to manually update that code for every single change you want to make.
In addition to the inadequacy of the CRM as a tool to link strategy and execution, RevOps teams face several other specific challenges.
2. Overreliance on Spreadsheets
Despite their widespread use, spreadsheets are an inefficient and error-prone tool for managing GTM strategies. Using them for planning, reporting, and tracking data can be time-consuming and lead to version control issues, especially when data is shared between multiple teams via email. Cloud-based spreadsheets are better, but they still come with unique limitations, especially when managing large datasets or collaborating in real-time.
For RevOps teams to scale, transitioning from spreadsheets to more specialized tools is essential to streamline operations, reduce manual data entry, and minimize errors.
3. Inefficient Collaboration Across Teams
GTM planning involves many moving parts and many people focusing on their specific roles. Because of this, RevOps teams often struggle to collaborate effectively. Furthermore, there may be impinged collaboration with other parts of the organization, where only relevant information may need to be visible.
For instance, when Customer Success (CS) teams assign account management responsibilities, they may need to share specific data with sales, but without the right tools, the process becomes disjointed. Having the ability to control data visibility and ensure all relevant stakeholders have access to the right information is crucial for effective collaboration.
4. No Single Source of Truth
Data is often spread across multiple platforms and tools, resulting in a fragmented view of the business. Without a centralized “single source of truth,” departments end up working with different versions of the same data, leading to confusion, errors, and siloed decision-making.
To optimize GTM execution, RevOps teams need to consolidate data from disparate sources into one unified platform. This ensures all teams are aligned and working from the same data set, allowing for more accurate and timely decision-making.
5. Lack of Policy Clarity and Enforcement
A successful GTM execution relies on clear rules of engagement or policies that govern how teams should collaborate, assign tasks, and track progress. However, with so many point tools and disparate data systems in place, policies often become undefined or inconsistently applied. This leads to confusion and inefficiencies, as operations teams spend valuable time making ad-hoc decisions instead of focusing on executing the GTM strategy.
When companies are small, these challenges may seem manageable. However, as organizations grow and the number of sales, marketing, and customer success team members expands (usually past 50), these issues become significant blockers to achieving revenue goals.
How can Fullcast help?
Even the best thought-out strategy can fail if you don’t have the tools you need to get the job done. Fullcast’s platform allows you to quickly and easily get the information you need to integrate planning and execution and support your sales reps and managers.
For CROs
- Model what-if scenarios so you can review the impact of alternate strategies and gain valuable insight into your market
- Codify your best practices so you can rest assured that all of your sales managers and sales reps are on the same page.
For Sales Managers
- Self-serve means no more waiting, so you can quickly add and make changes to accounts, territories, coverage models, and quotas and stay agile.
- Quickly and easily set up territories and quotas for new hires so they can hit the ground running.
- Quickly and easily model the impact of changes, including territory moves, role changes, and quota changes on KPIs, without having to wade through piles of dense spreadsheets.
- Track productivity and performance at an individual, team, territory, or product level.
For Sales Strategists
- Quickly and easily build complex territory and segmentation models using our AI-powered engine.
- Design selling roles and coverage models easily, and push those models to Salesforce with a single click.
- Setup and collaborate on quota planning across your entire organization and evaluate MBOs and KSOs from a territory, team, or product perspective.
- Evaluate your workforce plan by building out your proposed organizational chart and easily comparing your current and future states.
Are you ready to take RevOps to the next level? Book your Fullcast demo today!
