How to Build an Effect RevOps Strategy That Includes Salesforce
October 21, 2024
Prompt responses, personalized communication, tailored journeys—these are just a few of the value propositions businesses use to attract and retain customers. However, achieving customer satisfaction starts long before awareness occurs: A seamless customer journey begins with streamlined internal processes.
This is where Revenue Operations (RevOps) comes into play. Increasingly seen as an emblem of organizational harmony and efficiency, RevOps aims to align internal teams to ensure they’re all on the same page. This is often accomplished by building a RevOps strategy that leverages robust customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, like Salesforce.
If you’re looking to develop your effective RevOps and Salesforce strategy, you may consider hiring a Salesforce implementation specialist. However, Salesforce integration is just one aspect of a comprehensive RevOps plan.
To ensure accurate, data-driven decision-making while improving sales performance that drives growth, you’ll want the holistic expertise of a RevOps specialist. Learn more about the why and how below.
Understanding the Role of Salesforce in RevOps
Put simply, Revenue Operations is about boosting a business’s efficiency in three crucial sectors: People, processes, and platforms.
More specifically, the business function aims to create cohesion amongst marketing, sales, and customer service teams to maximize operational efficiencies, bolster productivity, and optimize revenue generation.
Salesforce is one of several essential RevOps tools. Let’s explore the platform further and why many RevOps professionals leverage it.
Salesforce as a RevOps Tool
Deemed an “industry-leading platform” by Forbes, Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM that works as an all-in-one solution for streamlining your organization’s sales pipeline.
Why are CRM strategies like Salesforce vital in the RevOps ecosystem?
In traditional organizational settings, data between different silos (such as marketing and sales) may be inaccessible, outdated, or inaccurate, which can ultimately hurt the customer experience and revenue growth. Salesforce works to undo this by helping to make sure all teams have data that’s sharable and correct.
Further, it supports teams by offering a clearer picture of the entire sales cycle and how each piece performs.
Key Salesforce Features Beneficial for RevOps
Business process automation platforms abound. What sets Salesforce apart from other CRM strategies and platforms comes down to the following:
- Elevated customization: Salesforce’s extensive customization options allow businesses to tailor the platform to their existing or enriched processes (rather than the other way around).
- Amplified automation: Salesforce further offers next-level automation to reduce manual, repetitive tasks and expedite processes precisely. Depending on the nature of your business and your RevOps goals, these may include:some text
- Marketing automation
- Marketing campaign automation
- Process automation tracking
- Pipeline management
- Data analytics
- Enriched customer data management: Additionally, Salesforce simplifies and strengthens customer data management by helping organizations manage leads, contacts, and customers from a single platform.
Developing a RevOps Strategy With Salesforce
Adding Salesforce to your tech stack is a multi-step process that requires a holistic approach. As such, we recommend leveraging RevOps as a service. These dedicated revenue operations experts can ensure efficiency and accuracy while guiding you through the following implementation process.
Aligning Salesforce With Business Goals
Aligning RevOps with Salesforce starts with obtaining clarity on your status quo. Your RevOps specialist can conduct a process audit to give you deeper insights into your customer’s journey, processes, and bottlenecks. (If you have a ticketing system in place, this is an optimal time to consult it.)
This is also where Salesforce customization becomes especially helpful, as you can tailor the platform according to your business objectives, such as:
- Capitalizing on data utilization to analyze go-to-market (GTM) data that may fuel decisions.
- Streamlining processes across departments (marketing, sales, customer service, and, depending on your organization, finance and IT).
- Harnessing the power of Salesforce’s dashboards to gather real-time feedback on your GTM strategy.
Integrating Salesforce With Other Tools
Salesforce has been widely praised for its integration capabilities. In fact, Salesforce offers 3,000-plus integrations to fortify your processes. The platform can also integrate with other top-tier platforms, such as:
- Slack
- Hubspot
That said, developing a RevOps Salesforce strategy should also consider your present platforms. If you have ancient tools in your arsenal, you may encounter issues ranging from data migration complexities to data synchronization challenges. This is another instance where you’ll benefit from having an expert walk you through the intricacies of integration.
Customizing Salesforce for Maximum Efficiency
So, what’s the best way to leverage Salesforce’s potential within RevOps?
First, consider RevOps best practices before exploiting Salesforce’s customization features to accomplish any number of the following:
- Craft communities within the platform to facilitate communication between your teams
- Automate personalized workflows
- Design visual workflow tools
- Utilize AI-driven Einstein analytics for forecasting trends, predictive insights, and preventing issues before they arrive
Implementing Your RevOps Strategy Using Salesforce
Taking Salesforce from concept to execution in your overarching RevOps strategy may require the following.
Training and Adoption
Ensuring your teams are well-trained in Salesforce’s functionalities is critical to its (and your organization’s) success. Fortunately, a RevOps specialist can introduce your employees to its various tools, answer questions, and address concerns.
True, you may experience some resistance or hesitation from those who have grown familiar with existing platforms. If so, it may be a good time to remind your team that, according to a recent report by Forrester, the fastest-growing businesses have aligned teams—and run from a single platform.
Monitoring and Optimization
To maximize your RevOps Salesforce approach, you may want to consider the following:
- Salesforce’s enablement analytics to track performance
- Troubleshooting issues with data analytics
- Upgrading Salesforce’s features as they’re released
Case Studies: Successful RevOps Strategies With Salesforce
What does all of this look like in practice? We were hoping you’d ask.
Real-World Examples
IBM, one of the world's biggest technology and consulting companies, turned to Salesforce after recognizing that its client services and sales professionals lacked visibility on client data and activity (which compromised customer service and sales tactics). To resolve this issue, Salesforce provided IBM and its disparate teams with a unified platform and a holistic view of the customer journey.
K Health is another example. The telemedicine organization partnered with Operatus to treat a litany of issues, including insufficient scheduling, slow EMR processes, and disjointed customer experience management.
Operatus tapped into Salesforce to:
- Optimize patient scheduling
- Revolutionize customer service
- Automate processes
The result? K Health saved time and money, streamlined billing, and improved its overall customer experience.
Operate at the Next Level With Operatus
If revenue operations are all about building a stronger alliance between your departments, consider Salesforce your ticket to getting there. RevOps Salesforce strategies can offer many advantages, from minimizing manual tasks and customizing processes to establishing a single source of truth for your teams.
Ready to experience the benefits for yourself? Partner with Operatus.
Our team of RevOps experts can help your organization gain greater visibility into your pipeline, break down silos, and work towards a structure that will foster sustainable growth.
Set up time to talk today to learn more and get started.
