Revenue Operations vs Sales Operations: What's the Difference?

Revenue and sales are fundamental to any business, driving its success. The customer journey becomes a smooth pathway to business growth when the sales, marketing, and customer service departments work harmoniously. 

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The alignment of these departments can significantly increase sales productivity, leading to higher revenue and greater profitability. That's where revenue operations (RevOps) come into play. RevOps generates more revenue and creates a seamless customer experience by coordinating and aligning these three departments. 

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While RevOps and sales operations (SalesOps) have similarities, it's important to understand the differences. We’ll explore these differences in our revenue operations vs sales operations comparison to achieve greater clarity and success in your business operations.

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What Is Revenue Operations (RevOps)?

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Revenue operations (RevOps) aims to optimize and maximize an organization’s revenue growth and business growth.

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It does so by integrating the departments that contribute to revenue generation, namely:

• Marketing
• Sales
• Customer service

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Revenue operations takes these “revenue teams” (which are often siloed) and brings them together. Through cross-department data sharing and collaboration, RevOps improves communication and transparency, creating a better end-to-end experience for clients and employees.

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RevOps’ exact functions will depend on your business’s progress and needs. RevOps can configure tech solutions from scratch to proactively increase revenue if you're a new brand. RevOps can ensure your existing sales tech stack works in harmony if you have established systems.

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Regardless of where you’re at, a revenue operations team collaborates with stakeholders from across the organization, such as VPs of Marketing, Customer Success Managers, Sales Directors, and other executives in charge of growth.

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Ultimately, a RevOps team can help you reach your revenue goals by eliminating silos and bettering your forecasting abilities. That’s why it’s predicted that 75% of the world’s highest-growth companies will likely embrace RevOps by 2025.

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What Is Sales Operations (SalesOps)?

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Sales operations (SalesOps) is a separate function that focuses on your sales processes and helps sales representatives do what they do best: sell.

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Similarly to RevOps, a SalesOps team supports your business by analyzing and optimizing strategies and processes. However, the target here is just sales—marketing and customer service don’t factor in.

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SalesOps focuses on every aspect of your sales practices, including:

• Sales strategy
• Lead management
• Sales data collection and reporting
• Sales forecasting
• Territory planning

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The ultimate goal? To streamline your sales function with better approaches and technology, creating a seamless customer journey through the sales pipeline. Think of it as a form of sales enablement that gives your sales team the necessary tools and resources.

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In most cases, SalesOps involves key stakeholders throughout the sales department, including Administrators, Directors, VPs, and Managers.

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SalesOps does pose some challenges, as it can view sales as an isolated department. However, its focus is overall beneficial, as improving sales processes means making more (and bigger) sales.

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What Are the Key Differences Between RevOps and SalesOps?

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With a clear understanding of RevOps and SalesOps, you’re better equipped to dive into the revenue operations vs sales operations conversation.

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Scope of Work and Focus

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The scope of sales operations is fairly narrow. SalesOps centers around making the sales process more efficient and your sales reps’ lives easier. That’s it.

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With revenue operations, the scope is wider. Remember, RevOps seeks to optimize revenue growth as a whole. This means that all revenue-generating departments—and, therefore, all customer-facing departments—are involved.

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Collaboration and Alignment

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Naturally, SalesOps is aligned primarily with the sales team as the goal is better sales performance. While collaborating with marketing or finance may be required in some cases, most action happens between players in the sales department.

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RevOps, on the other hand, only works when the marketing, sales, and customer success teams can collaborate freely. By aligning tech and data across these usually separate departments, RevOps can optimize the entire customer journey—not just the pre-purchase portion.

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Metrics and Goals

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When it comes to measuring success, SalesOps metrics are centered around individual and team sales performance. Using sales data, SalesOps tracks metrics like:

• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Sales cycle length
• Win/loss ratio
• Close rate

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SalesOps teams can also use these indicators for sales commission data.

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As for RevOps, the key metrics are more concerned with pure revenue, such as:

• Customer lifetime value (CLV)
• Customer churn rate
• Return on investment (ROI)
• Upsell percentage

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RevOps vs SalesOps: Which Is Best for Your Business?

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Key differences aside, RevOps and SalesOps can benefit your business long-term.

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SalesOps is made to support sales teams that may be struggling. It can help you build up a sales pipeline, as well as manage territory planning and strategic planning.

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RevOps is for when you want to go beyond sales and focus on the customer experience as a whole.

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With that distinction in mind, here’s how to know whether you should hire one or the other.

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When to Hire a Sales Operations Team

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While every business has a different trajectory, it’s generally agreed that a SalesOps team should come first.

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When companies—especially those in the SaaS space—are starting out, they’ll often have a sales department before a marketing or customer success team. As such, it’s unwise to hire a RevOps team designed to optimize processes across all customer-facing departments.

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Instead, set yourself up for early success by optimizing your sales processes. SalesOps can give your team the sales-specific tech stack and guidance to manage sales data, dedicate more time to conversions, and close more deals.

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When to Hire a Revenue Operations Team

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So, when should you turn to RevOps as a service?

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In general, RevOps is most beneficial when your business is more established. Maybe you’re making sales but not seeing the revenue growth you hoped for.

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A RevOps team can help you optimize revenue by halting revenue loss and strengthening existing revenue streams. Both of these objectives can be achieved thanks to RevOps’ insistence on cross-department communication.

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For Growing Brands, RevOps Is the Winner

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In the end, SalesOps and RevOps are immensely valuable. The former is crucial for fine-tuning the sales process, while the latter helps drive revenue through multiple channels.

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So, both are worth implementing. However, if you’re focused on growing in our ever-changing business landscape, RevOps is the top choice. Its approach to holistic optimization gives your brand a leg up over the competition—and isn’t that what every company wants?

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To get started with a RevOps team of your own, contact the experts at Operatus.

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And if you’re interested in learning more about RevOps, check out our guides to RevOps team structuring or switching from in-house RevOps to RevOps consulting.