Post-mortem: Matt Volm on RevOps myths, strategic simplicity, and more [video]

We recently talked to Matt Volm—cofounder and CEO at RevOps Co-op—about his post on the realities of revenue operations.

How do you remove RevOps roadblocks? Read on to find out (or watch the full conversation above).

Identification: People confuse RevOps for sales IT

Somewhere along the line, “RevOps” became synonymous with “sales.”

But sales reps aren’t the only members of go-to-market responsible for revenue.

“RevOps is the collection of MarketingOps, SalesOps, and CSOps,” Matt said. “It’s ownership and accountability of all operational functions that drive revenue for a company.”

But that’s not the only misconception surrounding RevOps. There are plenty of misbeliefs about what these teams actually do.

According to Matt, common examples include:

• Pulling simple reports from the CRM for individual team members
• Dropping everything to push complex CRM changes straight to production
• Acting as IT for sales reps and troubleshooting technical issues

“You're the one who owns the go-to market tech stack,” Matt said. “So, naturally, maybe the new salesperson or the more junior salesperson comes to you with all of their Salesforce problems. Or maybe their laptop’s not working or something else isn't working. So they're like, ‘Well, the only technology that I use is handled by RevOps, so RevOps, why is my hardware not working?’"

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Examination: GTM tech stacks are unwieldy beasts

Thanks to the proliferation of point solutions, the modern GTM tech stack is often as complicated as it is expansive.

Sales teams alone use an average of 10 tools to close deals. Sixty-six percent of reps say they’re overwhelmed by it.

It’s part of RevOps’ job to shield reps from the complexities of backend tooling so they can focus on actually selling. But this can lead to misunderstandings of how tech stacks function.

Put another way: That simple field a rep wants to add to the CRM? It might accidentally break everything.

“The CRM is typically the center of the universe for every go-to-market tech stack out there,” Matt said. “It’s been built and stitched and band-aided together. There are integrations and there are flows...it’s basically a developer environment.”

That means even a small request can require hours of technical effort.

“There can be a big disconnect between some of the things that the team needs and expects versus what RevOps can actually deliver on,” Matt said.

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Findings: Strive for simplicity

When you’re the keeper of the GTM stack keys, it’s all too easy to get lost in the weeds.

“We've all seen the memes of, ‘Could I spend 10 minutes manually doing this thing or could I spend the next five hours trying to figure out how to automate it?’” Matt said. “RevOps is very much guilty of that as well.”

To their credit, the day-to-day work of RevOps teams naturally opens the door to complexity.

They’re supporting a variety of departments. They’re assisting with technical processes, like lead routing and territory management. And through it all, they’re tasked with cutting costs and reducing operational burdens.

This is why using the right tools makes all the difference.

It’s much easier to provide more accurate, more actionable, and more timely insights to GTM teams when the info you need is all in one place instead of siloed across point solutions.

And for overworked RevOps teams, it’s even better when marketing, sales, and success can access the insights themselves instead of asking for help each time they need to take an action.

As for the problems RevOps teams are asked to solve in their everyday work, according to Matt, simplicity saves the day.

“Try to boil all that stuff down and just think…if you had to solve this problem today in the next hour, what would you do?” Matt said. “Start there, because that'll strip all of the complication out of it.”

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These are just some of the takeaways from our conversation with Matt Volm. Check out the full conversation to get the whole story.

And stay tuned for the next edition of Post-mortem. Got a post or topic you’d like us to tackle? Let us know.

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