It's a brand new year full of possibilities. No doubt some of you reading this have already set ambitious resolutions for yourself in 2024. But why stop at personal resolutions? The new year is the perfect time to set goals for your business, too! To help you get started, here are three RevOps resolutions you can set for your business to help you grow better this year:

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1: Define Your "Single Source of Truth" for Revenue Data

The goal of RevOps is to help companies generate revenue faster, more cost effectively and with lower execution risk. RevOps leaders achieve this goal by using revenue performance data to identify areas of opportunity for growth. Data-driven decision making requires that your business has comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date data. This is extremely difficult if different teams use different, siloed systems and/or spreadsheets to track performance. Revenue data should be centralized into a shared system that all teams use and are responsible for maintaining. For most businesses, you should use your CRM as your single source of truth. 

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When establishing your “single source of truth”, we recommend you follow these steps:

1. Choose the system you will use as your “single source of truth”. Nearly all of our customers choose their CRM but there are cases where the General Ledger or a Subscription Order Management platform may be a better choice based on the needs of your business.
2. Identify any critical data that resides in spreadsheets outside of any system.
3. Determine the system(s) where you will migrate your external spreadsheet data. We recommend migrating spreadsheets into “functionally related” systems when possible (e.g. revenue collections data should be migrated to Finance’s system(s), renewal targets should live within the CRM etc.)
4. For each system in your revenue tech stack, research the native integrations and/or other methods for “syncing” data, such as Zapier or an API, into your single source of truth.
5. Work with your systems administrator or a RevOps specialist to begin integrating these systems into your single source of truth.

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2: Document Your RevOps Processes

Documentation is often last on the to-do list of business leaders, but it's critical to ensure your revenue operations are working optimally. Inefficiency will creep into any process lacking clear guidelines and instructions. To keep your teams closely aligned and working efficiently, you need to have simple, clear, and executable documentation for all your revenue processes.

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We recommend you start by creating a visual flow chart of your RevOps processes. Process diagrams often do a much better job of showing how different processes and teams "fit together" than a written description alone. Flow charts also are excellent for identifying "decision branches" in a process (e.g. how different kinds of leads are routed). You can use a tool like LucidChart or Miro to create these diagrams easily. You can also build them using PowerPoint Smart Art. 

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We also recommend using as many pictures/screenshots as you can when explaining complex processes. Words should be used to express requirements, but the pictures illustrate how the process is done. Below is an example of how to use a Product Catalog on a Hubspot deal:

Lastly, you need to ensure all team members are trained on how to perform the documented process. RevOps should work closely with the functional heads of Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success to ensure new hires are trained on proper procedure during onboarding, and that process is adhered to during team meetings like sales one-on-ones and pipeline reviews. It’s also critical that these documents are easily accessible and remain up-to-date. This eliminates any potential sources of confusion, and also reduces inefficiencies, for your team. A process must be defined, documented, demonstrated, and disseminated in order to yield RevOps efficiencies.

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3: Review Your Win/Loss Reasons from Last Year

Understanding the reasons why you win and lose deals is essential to improving your revenue strategy. By analyzing the reasons behind your wins and losses, you can uncover hidden insights that can help fine-tune what is and isn't working within your business. At Traction AI, we recommend that all deals require a Closed Won/Lost Reason field to be filled out before they can be closed. We suggest configuring your CRM to have both a dropdown property that contains a standard set of reasons, as well as an optional "notes" field to enable the deal owner to capture additional details. This approach enables you to "bucket" common Win/Loss drivers for your reporting without sacrificing the nuance of a more detailed recap.

If you aren't tracking your Win/Loss reasons yet, the new year is the perfect time to start! We recommend reviewing all the qualified, closed deals from last year and writing a brief recap of why each was Won or Lost. From there, identify the common "themes" across your deal recaps and use these learnings to define your Win/Loss Reason dropdown property options. When we work with our customers to define their Win/Loss reasons, we often recommend including “Price to Value”, “Competitor(s)”, and “Solution Set” (i.e. differentiating features) among your list of options.

Need help making sure you keep your RevOps resolutions this year? Feel free to reach out and schedule a complimentary RevOps consultation with us.