Marketing Ops vs Sales Ops vs RevOps: How They Work Together For Maximum Growth

There’s an adage in business that says, “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”

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We see this saying in action every day. Companies are always looking for ways to sell more and increase revenue growth.

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In the past, that meant turning to marketing operations (Marketing Ops) and sales operations (SalesOps). These optimization strategies focus on uplifting their namesake departments, boosting lead generation, conversion rates, and more.

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More recently, a third option has surfaced: revenue operations (RevOps). RevOps takes a comprehensive approach to growth by aligning teams across the business.

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Despite the rise of RevOps, marketing and sales operations still matter. In fact, all three strategies can coexist. When companies bring marketing, sales, and other operations together, nearly 90% see above-market growth.

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If that’s the revenue growth you’re after, keep reading.

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What Is Marketing Ops?

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Let’s start with marketing operations.

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Marketing Ops is a business function that oversees and optimizes the marketing team’s work. By monitoring and analyzing marketing strategies and activities, a Marketing Ops team helps the marketing department overcome challenges, work more efficiently, and scale cleanly.

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Marketing Ops relies on various pieces of marketing technology (including automation solutions) to improve processes like:

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• Campaign management
• Email marketing
• Demand generation
• Data analysis

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As these processes improve, so does the customer journey through the sales funnel. The result is a more effective marketing strategy that can boost customer sentiment and sales—without overwhelming the marketing team.

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What Is SalesOps?

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SalesOps is a similar strategy that instead focuses on optimizing the sales process. Every part of the sales department’s day-to-day work—from tackling lead management to analyzing sales data—is touched by a SalesOps team.

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The goal? To help sales teams work more efficiently, reduce friction for customers in the sales pipeline, and, ultimately, enable reps to make more sales.

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SalesOps teams work to achieve this objective by implementing and improving strategies like:

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• Forecasting
• Territory management
• Pipeline management
• Opportunity tracking

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However, at small enterprise companies, SalesOps teams can become the primary IT resource for marketing, sales, and customer satisfaction. That’s a misuse of expertise. While SalesOps is IT-intensive and should work closely with Sales Enablement and other operations teams, it should focus on streamlining sales processes.

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Differences and Similarities: Sales Operations vs Marketing Operations

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Comparing Marketing Ops vs SalesOps can be challenging. The marketing and sales departments often work closely together, and one’s performance generally affects the other’s.

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However, these are two distinct business functions with some clear differences.

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The primary difference, of course, is that SalesOps is focused on sales strategies, and Marketing Ops is concerned with marketing strategies. As such, they use separate metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success.

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While SalesOps tracks sales-centric metrics like win rates and pipeline velocity, Marketing Ops works to improve lead quality, conversion rates, and ROI for marketing campaigns.

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Inevitably, though, there are some similarities. Both Marketing Ops and SalesOps exist to help businesses reach their overall objectives of growing and driving revenue. Both do so by prioritizing a seamless customer experience. And both rely on technology and data analysis to deliver results.

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What Is RevOps?

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Now, let’s throw a third concept into the mix.

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Revenue operations (RevOps for short) is a strategy that aligns teams from all over an organization with goals of driving growth and meeting business objectives.

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To achieve those ends, RevOps stresses the importance of alignment among teams. A RevOps team encourages crystal-clear communication between the revenue team—marketing, sales, and customer success teams—as well as departments like:

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• Product
• Engineering
• Finance
• Data analytics

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While the exact roster of teams will depend on the business, the key here is cross-functional collaboration. By combining info and insights from all of these departments, revenue operations can dramatically improve the entire customer journey—from marketing to sales and beyond.

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Large enterprises may have an internal RevOps team, but most companies may prefer to engage RevOps as a service. Either way, the work of a revenue operations team helps drive enormous growth.

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How RevOps, Marketing Ops, and SalesOps Work Together for Maximum Growth

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Although adopting either RevOps, Marketing Ops, or SalesOps can better your business, the real results come when you incorporate all three.

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Marketing, sales, and other core business processes are inextricably intertwined. Improvement in any of these areas will have a ripple effect throughout your organization—and an improvement in all of them will radically transform the customer experience and bring you closer to your business goals.

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So, how do marketing, sales, and revenue operations work together?

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It starts with the first two. Marketing Ops and SalesOps teams help your marketing and sales departments operate efficiently, making them as strong as possible on their own.

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Meanwhile, a RevOps team can ensure these departments—along with customer success, finance, and others—are talking to each other. It gets every team member in your organization on the same page. And it all but guarantees your full tech stack is efficient and effective.

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Together, all three strategies keep your departments in top shape—individually and as a unit.

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Operatus: Your RevOps Solution

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Incorporating Marketing Ops, SalesOps, and RevOps into your business is a surefire way to spur growth. Marketing and sales operations provide a solid foundation for the revenue engines of your organization, while revenue operations find ways to have them improve in unison.

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And although we believe in the importance of all three, RevOps is our specialty. At Operatus, we know how to optimize the revenue-generating functions that drive business results.

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We’ve done it for companies like Bloomfire and can do it for you, too.

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At the end of the day, we encourage you to prioritize SalesOps, Marketing Ops, and RevOps. But when you’re ready to tackle that last one, contact us. We can help your company keep growing.

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Because when you’re not growing, you’re fading away.