AMA: Checkr Director, Revenue Operations, Lauren Davis on Customer Success / Revenue Ops Alignment

RevOps’ role is to understand the entire customer journey, each team’s role, the company strategy, and how all those pieces mesh. While each GTM team (sales, marketing, customer success) is and should be focused on executing and hitting today’s goals, RevOps is thinking about tomorrow’s goals, what needs to happen in order to scale, and how to drive consistent, sustainable growth. There are many reasons and benefits to work together: * Internal alignment and advocacy. A key part of the RevOps role is to ensure company and GTM leadership understand what the key drivers in the business are and where we need to invest or focus. * Resource management. When to hire, what roles, how to compensate for optimal performance, etc. * Insights. Ex. visibility into CSM activity and performance, customer health, product usage, etc. * Removing bottlenecks and driving efficiency within the team. Ex. removing manual processes, better data quality, single view of the customer, etc. * Program management of strategic initiatives.

It’s not uncommon for leadership to fixate on sales because it’s very easy to see the result: I hire one sales person, I get $X in incremental revenue. But the fact of the matter is that you can’t have sustainable revenue growth without retaining customers. For this problem in particular, I’d focus on two things: 1. Breaking down revenue growth to show retention as part of the equation. For revenue this year, what % came from existing customers vs. new sales. If upsells and expansion live in CS, break this out separately. The drivers of revenue growth are NRR and net new sales/new customer acquisition. Both are necessary. 2. Highlighting the impact of a CSM. As I mentioned, it’s easy to see the direct impact of adding a sales rep (i.e. their quota, $X in bookings/revenue). The goal is to get to something similar for a CSM. This will depend on what CSMs are responsible for at your company (e.g. renewals, upsell/expansion, customer health, product adoption). If CS is responsible for renewals, show % of customers that renew and LTV of customers with and without a CSM.

Never underestimate the importance of building strong relationships at work. I honestly think all of this stems from building good relationships with the leadership across the teams and showing how RevOps can help CS improve, operate more efficiently, and achieve their goals. The fact of the matter is, both teams are working towards the same goals. When I’ve seen situations like this before, I think it’s best to focus on the following: * Focus on the shared goals across the two teams. * Create shared objectives and initiatives. * Pocket a few wins, and call attention to it. * Focus on your key stakeholders and invest the time in building the relationship. Specifically focus on ensuring you’re aligned with leadership. Remember, we’re all people - connecting on a personal level will make it more enjoyable and collaborative. * Be an internal advocate for the team where necessary.

The answer is, it depends. It depends on exactly what you're referring to when you say "customer data," how your org is setup, and where the data lives. Customer data is many things: * Firmographic/demographic information * Contract, pricing, billing information * Product usage * Communication (ex. emails, meetings, calls) * Rep-created (ex. account plans, notes) There needs to be an owner for each of these pieces and an owner on the strategy of how to connect them all into a single view. The latter is often a massive project that needs executive-level buyin and resourcing. If it's treated as a side project that one team can own, it won't be complete. I'd focus on the business case and generating buyin for the initiative and then come up with owners for the subsets of the data. (ex. firmographic/demographic information would likely be owned by RevOps, sales might be responsible for Contract information, product for product usage, etc.). Select the owner for the overall project and continued maintenance based on the data infrastructure. This is likely corp eng, product, or an overall bizops/program mgmt team.