What do revenue operations managers get wrong when trying to influence the C-Suite?

There is a behavior the RevOps teams of all seniority levels can work on, and should constantly work to improve.  We have a tendency to assume everyone can read the data like we do, and we send reports when instead we should have sent insights. 

But, what exactly does that mean? Let us explore an example.

RevOps, as a data centric profession, means that we are closer to the numbers that define business performance more than most other teams within the organization. As a result, that familiarity fosters a false perception that what we see in the data is obvious to everyone else.  

Situation: A Chief Revenue Officer asks: "What does our pipeline look like for Q1?"

• A first instinct here could be to run over to Salesforce, put together a quick dashboard with a few reports capturing the open opportunities. Maybe we add some additional reporting, visualizing sales activities, like meetings and prospecting, as leading indicators of future pipeline potential.  
• We then merrily copy the link to the dashboard and send it over email. Slack, or Teams "Here's the view on our pipeline! Let me know if you have any questions." Mission accomplished right?

The problem here, is that instead of leveraging the data mastery, and expertise over the data to tell a story, we sent a a wall of graphs. This puts the burden on the CRO to decipher the data to determine what action needs to be taken next. 

Situation Re-imagined - What a RevOps partner hears: "What risk is in our pipeline for Q1? Where do I need to invest resources and partner with other teams to accelerate pipeline growth?"

• Just like before, we can run over to our data sources of truth, in this case Salesforce. Again, we put together a phenomenal dashboard.
• We review the data, and look for the areas that are going well, as well as where we are weak.  
• Potentially we find that we have strong mid-market pipeline coverage, but we are struggling to generate enterprise pipeline.  
• To ensure we are not jumping to conclusions, we dig deeper, investigating the pipeline health by going one layer down to investigate pipeline age. We also dig into the distribution between Inbound and Outbound, questioning if it is performing as expected across our segments. Are we seeing any notable changes in conversion rates, activity or channel mix?

Next, we package a synopsis for our stakeholder - a summary that can be ready in < 3 minutes:

• What do they critically need to know? Our Q1 pipeline is at risk, due to insufficient pipegen in Q4, coupled with an aging pipeline that is masking the shortfall of our pipeline coverage.
• Data driven observations on why that's the case: We have seen a significant decline in our outbound pipeline generation efficacy across enterprise, this is further complicated by a decline in inbound conversion rates from meetings to active pipeline, even though we have had no meaningful change in the personas through that channel. Over 35% of our pipeline slated to close in Q1 has been pushed out repeatedly from Q3 of the previous fiscal year.
• What do we need to do to fix it? Let's bring in our marketing partners and put together a new campaign to re-engage cold opportunities from Q3 and Q4. Let's evaluate our target account lists, and see if we can put together microsegmentation for an outbound blitz.

Reframing how we addressed the question allows us to save back and forth, and get right to the action. RevOps plays a key role in enabling our C-level stakeholders to move quickly and rally resources to address a business problem.

Revenue operations managers get several things wrong when trying to influence the C-Suite:

• Trying to communicate too many or overly complex topics - these leaders have very little time and are constantly switching context. Pick one or two key takeaways and focus all your effort, content, and communications on those things.

• Not answering questions accurately and succinctly. If you get a question from someone in the C-Suite in a meeting, it is always okay to say "I will get back to you on that" instead of trying to answer by rambling with too much detail or with an incomplete or ineffective thought.

• Approaching meetings, conversations, or presentations with the C-Suite without a concrete ask or a sense of "what do we want to achieve here?". Every one of these conversations should be focused on making sure a key point or concept is communicated in order to get buy-in or approval for an initiative, or at the very least to get aligned that the more "in the weeds" work you and your team is doing is right for the business.