RevOps Best Practices to Increase Quota Attainment Eddie Reynolds, RevOps Leader and CEO at Union Square Consulting recently spoke to Abhijeet Vijayvergiya about how misunderstood RevOps and quota attainment is. And what can be the right way to approach both, in a way that they work symbiotically. Let’s dive in. Sales quota attainment rates continue to drop as we speak. Digital selling has been harder for reps, exacerbated by the current market conditions when buyers have a tight grip over their budgets.   Revenue operations comes as a respite to aid this situation for businesses. But terms like quotas are often misunderstood. RevOps is still fairly new to help sales teams succeed better in uncertain times.   We spoke to revenue expert Eddie Reynolds on what he thinks of the two facets independently, and together. He busted some myths around quotas, sales productivity and our favorite – RevOps.    Read on to hear what Eddie has to say about the selling world today, rep productivity and what areas of RevOps he is really passionate about.    If you’re short on time, here is a quick summary of the conversation. If you enjoy our discussion, check out more episodes of our podcast. You can follow on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the episode. Revenue Operations is Beyond Just Setting Up Tools Abhijeet: Hi Eddie. Love what you’re doing at Union Square and I think it’s great to see your focus on revenue operations. It’s so exciting. Eddie: Yes, it is exciting! I’m very passionate about this topic. A big part of revenue operations is setting up tools, but something that I’ve always been so passionate about is all the other areas of revenue operations. How do you take these tools and turn them into part of an overall revenue engine that ultimately drives revenue and provides visibility to leadership on what’s working, what’s not, and what direction you’re headed in? And that’s something I’ve been very passionate about, probably since the first moment that I ran into Salesforce and even before, and trying to think, okay, as somebody who’s actually selling every day: How can I use this tool? How can I use the data in this tool?  How can I build a better process so that I can sell more, market them or serve customers better?  It’s really interesting to see how much revenue operations has grown in the last few years, where a number of years ago you didn’t even hear that term. And now you hear it everywhere. And I think it’s a really amazing thing for business in general.  Abhijeet: I love the fact that you’ve been an operator yourself. You’ve sold, you’ve been into the weeds. So you understand it quite well compared to a lot of folks who are not into sales. You have that unique experience and you can appreciate what the user goes through, and you can actually bring that into practice. Eddie: I was just going to say, I think that is a big piece of maybe not what’s missing, but challenges that folks have. And I have no issue with somebody entering RevOps that comes from a technical background, an admin background, a finance background or just starts in operations.  But one challenge is that those folks really need to sit down with the sales people, sit down with the marketers, sit down with people in customer success and understand what they do every day, what motivates them and the challenges they face.  If you’re working in a silo and you’re just looking at data and tools, you’re going to miss a lot of the nuance of what makes jobs like sales so challenging, and you’re not going to understand why. You get resistance to trying new tools. Why do you get resistance to adoption? Why are things like data entry difficult? You have to be in their shoes, or atleast sit down with them to try to understand the challenges in their job. Eddie Reynolds The Link Between RevOps & Quota Attainment  Abhijeet: Definitely. The next thing I want to know more from you is as a rep, the most important thing is quota, right? I think more than half or at least half of the salary is linked to variables or commissions that are all quota.  You’ve been an AE yourself, you understand how quota is important for salespeople. And RevOps plays a very important role here. They can really create the right process, systems, tools, as well as enablement in some cases to make salespeople become more successful. Now that you’ve been an AE, and you’re also into RevOps consulting through your company, what’s your take on improving sales quota attainment? There are reports out there which talk about the quota attainment dropping year after year. Whereas the proliferation of tools, if you look at it, they’ve grown like 7X from the number of tools that existed in anybody’s tech stack just a few years ago. These two don’t seem to correlate, right? There are so many tools out there to help the sales people, but at the same time, quotas are abysmally low. So I’d love to hear your perspective on what’s going wrong.  Eddie: Well, in regards to the tools, they’re only as good as the team using them. You can give me Tiger Woods’s set of golf clubs and since I don’t play golf, I’m not going to perform very well.  And he could go buy a set of golf clubs at a garage sale and wipe the floor with me. It’s the same thing with any tools that you’re using, whether it’s revenue tools or any tools in life in general. They’re not going to fix broken processes and broken strategies. Or poor assumptions on things like quotas.  One of the biggest problems that we see with quotas is that oftentimes they’re based on hopes and dreams and not real data.  Eddie Reynolds The cliche is that the revenue leader says, “Well, we

Signifyd’s Journey of Moving from a Siloed GTM Structure to a RevOps Model Most fast-growing B2B companies come across silos as they scale. A RevOps model helps break this silos and align GTM teams towards common goals. But it’s easier said than done. Moving from a siloed GTM structure to a RevOps model requires great planning, focus and execution. In this article, we explore how a company successfully made this transition and how it has been worth it. Here’s a detailed breakdown of our conversation with Dan Jiao, Senior Director of RevOps at Signifyd.  Dan’s path to Signifyd has not been linear. Coming from a chemical engineering background, he worked his way through sales and sales ops in different organizations, gradually advocating for RevOps. His insights into breaking down silos put him at the forefront of change at Signifyd (an eCommerce fraud protection platform).  We discussed a live RevOps model Dan is responsible for implementing within the company. You can listen to the entire conversation here: Understanding GTM Operations Before we approach the deeper end of revenue operations, let’s get the basics right.  Since we’re focussing on GTM heavily, here’s how Gartner defines GTM: A plan to show how an organization can engage with customers to convince them to buy their product or service and gain a competitive edge. Gartner GTM involves streamlining multiple functions, including pricing, sales, communication channels, buying journey, new launches, updates, and product rebranding or introducing a new market.  As a strategy, it needs all hands on deck, i.e., all revenue-generating functions must work together using complex workflows to sync multiple ops.  Siloed GTM Ops Create Revenue Bottlenecks When teams need to be tight-knit, silos can create significant revenue bottlenecks. Here’s an example of what silos can do in a fast-scaling B2B company. Your organization is growing, and so is the team. The total number of people in GTM ops just touched 25. Simultaneously, customers love your product’s use cases.  If this winning streak continues, you may double your team size in the next year. Instead, as your teams grow, problems start cropping up.  It may begin with the MoM quota attainment taking a sharp nosedive. Alongside, sales and marketing clash over poor quality SQLs entering the pipeline. Customer churn rate increases as teams and new hires fail to keep up with the customer journey, creating friction in handoffs. Subsequently, rep productivity decreases, and attrition rates increase.  Breaking down silos isn’t simply a hypothetical situation. It’s a real problem that several growing organizations face as they shift focus to scaling.  It was also a problem that Signifyd wanted to solve at their company.  How Silos Manifest in GTM Ops Silos can manifest in any of the 4 GTM areas – tools, systems, processes and data.  1. Tools and Systems But as Dan points out, Today, every organization (big and small) has a relatively sizable tech stack to make GTM workflows actually work. This tech stack also supports growing teams.  Each tool in the stack has specific use cases like conversational intelligence, forecasting, analytics, or something else. But with a disintegrated tech stack, you could just be piling on tools with similar or the same functions for different teams.  That’s what Signifyd noticed in 2021 before Dan arrived at the company. They invested in several tools, coming off the back of a funding round. And while Signifyd still uses several of those tools to maintain a good tech stack, some tools have overlapping functions.  2. Data Data plays a significant role in building or breaking down silos. It’s at the very center of the GTM tech stack, keeping all teams in the loop about leads, customers, and revenue performance.  Data helps you dig into insights and make critical decisions.  But as businesses grow, so does the volume of data. Plus, as technology progresses, the amount of data generated keeps increasing.  That’s where silos in data can hamper even near-perfect GTM operations.  For 90% of organizations, data silos are a major challenge to growth.  Siloed data is stored in isolated tech stacks, wherein each team uses its own tools. Data is controlled by the team that owns it but is inaccessible to others. Siloed data takes away from what GTM is meant to be—a unification of efforts between revenue-generating functions.  Data silos are not good for business. They create confusion, misaligned goals, internal competition, isolated thinking, and stunted growth.  Make the Move to RevOps for Breaking Down Silos Dan pointed out the biggest pain point cropping up, courtesy of silos. Here are 5 more reasons why you should turn to RevOps for breaking down silos.  1. To Provide a Connected Customer Experience Over 54% of organizations still find it difficult to provide a connected customer experience across multiple channels. A streamlined experience increases customer engagement and pipeline visibility for you. 2. To Improve Cross-Functional Collaboration RevOps facilitates shared goals, processes, and a common language between all customer-facing teams. It helps in breaking down silos so each team understands the other’s goals, objectives, and responsibilities. This clarifies each team’s role and overall contribution to GTM. 3. To Stay On Top of Business Opportunities Using reliable data, RevOps creates clarity on pipeline visibility, upsells, and cross-sells. And with visibility comes deeper insights into business opportunities. Organizations that believe in clean data are 23 times more likely to acquire new customers, 6 times more likely to retain them, and 19 times more likely to be profitable. 4. To Make More Effective Forecasts Less than 25% of sales organizations have a sales forecasting accuracy of 75% or higher. RevOps can improve your forecasting effectiveness with shared information presenting a more complete picture. 5. To Simplify Work for Everyone Involved RevOps makes work easier for all teams and leaders involved in GTM by breaking down silos. It improves productivity and enables more streamlined workflows. Instead of spending time searching for information and going back and forth with each other, teams focus on aligning their individual goals with the business. Breaking Down Silos at Signifyd With RevOps Signifyd formally introduced its RevOps process in November 2022. However, a soft initiation was already underway since mid-2022. Before

Using Data Analytics to Improve Customer Experience: A RevOps Guide Customer experience holds a significant place at the center of the RevOps universe. Companies that excel at customer experience have been seen to achieve more than 2x of revenue growth. And for businesses, improving the customer experience has increased: Sales revenues by 2 to 7%  Profitability by 1 to 2% Shareholder return by 7 to 10% There’s no avoiding it. A laser-like focus on customer experience is critical for sustainable and long-term growth. It can give you the impetus to outperform competitors and craft a compelling growth story for employees and investors.  But inconsistent and unreliable data can clog the revenue wheel, stopping revenue-generating teams from responding effectively to customer needs.  So how can you use data analytics to improve customer experience? Our conversation with Mollie Bodensteiner, Global RevOps leader at Deel, throws some light on the topic.  Tune in to the full podcast episode here.  Link Between Data Analytics and Customer Experience RevOps can help spot and solve the data problem using data analytics to improve customer experience.  Mainly, it smooths out context, so you can: 1. Determine the right strategies to drive ROI Successful experience-led growth strategies increase customer satisfaction by at least 20% and offer significant financial benefits for businesses. In particular, they improve: Cross-sell rates by 15 to 25% Companies’ share of wallet by 5 to 10%  Improve customer satisfaction and engagement by 20 to 30 dollars With data analytics, you can action your data to refine the buying journey, determine how to generate revenue and delight customers simultaneously.  You can better understand your customers’ emotive elements through tangible information and build marketing and sales strategies to solve the pain points.  Plus, you can use data analytics to improve customer experience by mining dark data. On average, 52% of a company’s data could be dark. Dark data is captured in your systems but not leveraged for insights. It could contain hidden customer profiles, behavior patterns, past buyer champions, and lost customer relationships.  To sum it up, strategic alignment supports data analytics to improve customer experience.  2. Do more with less The slowdown in growth has pushed companies to chase value. And in doing so, companies are still figuring out how to “do more with less.”  How do you define what is “less” and determine the business trade-off?  RevOps uses data analytics to improve customer experience by gathering insights into processes for reps and stakeholders. It tries to understand: How to make these revenue-generating workflows more effective, and How to help marketing, sales, and customer success be more productive than before Data analytics gives RevOps the much-needed information to identify shortcomings, prioritize improvement of limited resources and generate more revenue.  3. Use the right message at the right time Data analytics gives you the information to dig into the customer’s journey and deliver the right message to the right customers at the right time.  It enables you to live up to (and even surpass) customer expectations by giving them what they want without the customer asking for it.  You also get to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and manage both good and bad interactions to produce the next best action.  And while the next best action may not always generate revenue, it must meet the customer’s needs and keep them happy. How Revops Facilitates Data Analytics to Improve Customer Experience  RevOps primarily aims to connect teams to drive predictable revenue and boost growth.  When it comes to data analytics, RevOps leverages it in three ways to align teams: Customer data (demographic and account data) Functional data (operational data and metrics) Financial data (link back to value) Here are 6 ways RevOps facilitates data analytics to improve customer experience throughout their journey, not just at the point of sale. 1. Get complete pipeline visibility Revenue leaders are focusing on driving value, efficiency, and compelling growth in the current business environment (which is undergoing a slowdown).  Reaching this goal requires undisputed access to clean, accurate, and reliable customer data. This data, particularly first-party data that’s reliable, provides powerful insights.  In reality, however, companies are drawing insights from stale, incorrect, or incomplete data. The result—missing out on critical revenue opportunities to create exceptional customer experience.  That’s where RevOps plays a crucial role in identifying gaps and building systems to capture customer data in a bulletproof way. It provides a 360-degree view of customer engagement that lets you better define and execute customer experience priorities.  Another benefit is you can identify the champions so you can engage with them to see the deal through. Also, you can prioritize accounts that aren’t adequately multithreaded.  RevOps uses data analytics to improve customer experience by maintaining a healthy pipeline and eliminating bottlenecks.  You can ensure data is well managed with a unified view across the business as RevOps connects your tech stacks and aligns your systems. 2. Personalize the customer journey RevOps uses data analytics to identify patterns and trends in customer behavior to foster a customer-centric approach.  Teams leverage analytics to personalize the customer experience by periodically modifying the ICP to achieve the right audience. By constantly evaluating the ICP, you segment your audience, understand each segment’s pain points and improve personalization.  Data analytics also provide revenue operations teams with a better understanding of the following: Who do you sell to How do you sell to them How does the buyer make a decision And, how does your solution fit their needs Not only that, but teams can also determine the role of each stakeholder in the buying committee and share personalized content (that’s relevant and valuable). You can isolate specific pain points for each stakeholder and solve them.  For example, if you’ve missed adding stakeholder contact data as they get added to the process during the deal, you may be engaging with the wrong champion entirely.  With data analytics, RevOps optimizes the sales playbook by blending relationship intelligence with buyer engagement.  It looks for patterns in buyer-seller interactions across segments, territories, and verticals so you can personalize the journey for them.  Simultaneously, you can build use

How To Analyze Sales Data Across the Pipeline: A Comprehensive Guide Meeting sales targets and productivity goals has sales reps in a bind. To make the job easier, one of the first few tasks you may have undertaken is deploying technology. However, adding tools to the mix may not be the solution. As more and more sales tools come into play, you increasingly rely on digital systems and an increasing amount of data. You need actionable insights and predictive signals extracted from large amounts of data. This drives more value from analytics in real-time. It’s done using signals that suggest the next best action to move deals forward. It can seem intimidating to find these insights without first understanding how to analyze sales data. In this guide, we take a deep dive into how to analyze sales data and use it to maximize growth. What Is Sales Data? Before we move on to analyzing sales data, let’s get a clear understanding of the sales data definition. Sales data is the information gathered by tracking your sales activities, from customer touchpoints to engagements. Different types of sales data include: What Is Sales Data Analysis? Sales analysis evaluates the sales data and revenue generated over a specific period. It leverages technology and processes to analyze sales data and extract insights. You can improve rep performance in the short and long term by analyzing sales data. Plus, you can identify, model and predict sales trends or outcomes. Sales analysis is categorized into four types: 1. Descriptive A descriptive sales analysis shows you what happened in the past or what’s happening in the present. It tracks historical data and compares it to current performance. 2. Diagnostic Diagnostic analyses aim to find out the “why” behind sales performance data. It also tries to understand what actions caused a particular situation to occur. 3. Prescriptive Prescriptive sales analysis determines how to solve a specific problem to improve performance. It first assesses the data and prescribes (or suggests) the next best action. 4. Predictive As the name suggests, predictive sales analysis learns from past and current performance to gauge patterns. It then makes educated predictions of what will happen in the future. This gives you insights into building forecasts and setting optimum sales goals. Why is it Important to Analyze Sales Data? 97% of sellers say that sales intelligence tools are “very important” or “important.” But why is it so important for you to analyze sales performance? We found 8 reasons why: 1. To optimize future performance Analyzing sales data equips you with the insights to build better revenue strategies. Using actionable insights, you can improve future performance. Moreover, you can identify the actual sales figures to build accurate and reliable forecasts. As a bonus, your reps avoid chasing prospects with low intent. 2. To make informed decisions As leaders, you make better decisions when you have information you can act upon. That’s what analyzing sales data does for you. It shows you the areas of improvement. Not only that, it also helps you figure out which channels work best, which ones you can double down on and what locations or industries you should serve. Say you’re focusing on LinkedIn, but most of your leads come from email marketing. Using sales analysis, you can prioritize successful channels. 3. To understand the market The reports from sales analytics give specific insights into demand for your product(s). If there’s an increase or decline, you’ll know it. But that’s not all. Analytics also helps you round up the possibilities for demand changes. For instance, a decline could mean that your competitor offers a better product or better features. With market insights, you can determine when it’s time to find a new target market, improve your features or add more. You also get an assessment of market prices and the value of your product(s). 4. To drive better use cases Customers may use your tool for specific needs, or there may be features they prefer. Insights from analyzing sales data can drive better use cases for other buyers. When customers get a unique perspective and solution for their problem, they’re more likely to stick around. 5. To personalize the sales process Analytics evaluates your Historical sales data Patterns in closed-won and closed-loss deals Buyer needs Industry data It gives you a distinct peek into the buyer committee, defining individual stakeholder roles. Which means you get to personalize interactions suited to their needs. Buyers will more likely consider your business if reps engage in research. What buyers are looking for in sales interactions (Source: LinkedIn, 2022) 6. To drive productivity Find out which sales motions lead to more wins using analytics. Following this, you can double down on these motions and replicate them for all reps. Plus, you get rich insights and data-driven feedback for qualitative coaching. With these workflows in place, reps can focus on what matters most – personalized selling and winning more deals. 7. To improve cash flow Sales is one of the primary sources of cash flow. Analyzing it gives you a better understanding of your current cash position. You can take steps to refine your sales process in a way that benefits cash flow and your business. 8. To get on the growth track Change the path of your business by getting on the growth track with sales analytics. Use it to improve sales processes and, subsequently, revenue. With an improved cash flow, win rate, retention rate, productivity and forecasts, sales analytics can back you up for funding opportunities. The better the health of your business, the better your chances for acquiring investment. How To Analyze Sales Data? The following steps show how you can analyze sales data systematically. Step 1: Identify the sales data to collect You can identify what sales data points to collect using metrics. Below are some key metrics to watch out for: 1. Sales revenue It shows the total revenue you’ve earned from sales over a specific period. Use sales revenue to determine if you’re in a healthy growth situation, if you’ve hit business goals or if you’re setting

7 Salesforce Data Enrichment Tools When data in Salesforce is stale and incomplete, it canhamper sales operations. This outdated and incomplete data can be filled using tools for data enrichmentthat will fill up the gaps. Best Data Enrichment Tools: Nektar.ai: It’s an all-in-one stop shop for everything Salesforce. It automatically updates contacts and opportunities with first party data as well as historical insights. ZoomInfo: Has a vast collection of firmographic & technographic data perfect for finding decision makers. Clearbit: Offers real-time appendage of data and integrates with marketing tools for lead segmentation. Crunchbase: Concentrates on startups, gives company profiles, funding history, industry trends. (Free tier available) Leadgenius: Customizable web crawlers that collect niche-specific information. Cognism: Blending of data enrichment with automation and multi-channel engagement. Ringlead: Ideal for telemarketing through features like call scripting as it cleanses and enriches B2B contactdata. Choosing the Right Tool: Think about your industry type, what kind of information you are looking for (firmographics or technographics), how much you want to spend, and whether you would like real-time updates or automation happening. What is Data Enrichment? Introduction Your ideal customer is not just a name or address. It is a full-fledged human with certain buying habits, persona and social media footprint that screams of “perfect- fit”. Your salesforce data might only present a distorted or very limited picture of your buying committee. It can act like a dusty attic with crammed boxes full of half- remembered details. Your CRM is the backbone of your business decisions and you can’t rely on skewed numbers. You would want to make it as much valuable as possible to base your future plan on a solid strategy. This is exactly where data enrichment can help you. What is Data Enrichment? Data enrichment helps to fill out complete information about your leads like contact number, address, company and even company related details like size, industry, location etc. Imagine you get a lead of someone names Adam Doe, from Acme Ltd. It might sound promising but what is Acme all about? Who is this guy Adam beyond his email address and phone number? Data enrichment snoops in and pulls out information from social media activity, business directories and even internal purchase history to prepare a 3D persona. Now, Adam Doe is a tech enthusiast with a knack for technology updates and purchase history of high end gadgets. There you go! It’s time to tailor your pitch and win Adam over. Your lead has become a real person with real interest who can be engaged with at a personal level. Data enrichment precisely adds valuable information into your existing customer data on Salesforce. This additional intel can give you a holistic picture of your target audience and prospects. It can be performed in three ways: Direct: Your leads might decide to provide complete information about themselves by filling out a survey. Internal: You combine scattered information about your lead across different databases into one External: You source this out to third party data enrichment services that can access external records. Salesforce data enrichment allow teams to create a single, unified source of all CRM data so that team members can make decisions efficiently. Data can be enriched via: Data Cleansing: This means getting rid of obsolete, duplicated, partial data and making the datasets error-free. Data Appending: By collating data from multiple sources, a unified dataset can be created that offers a complete customer profile. Why do you need a Salesforce Data enrichment tool? As per studies, 77% organisations struggle with data quality issues. While the reps are already grappling with an increasing buying committee data enrichment can essentially make their life easier by providing them as much information as possible about their leads. With right kind of data enrichment, sales teams can: Leverage better quality data: Data enrichment gives valuable context to the data by removing redundancy. This can help in creating an effective sales pipeline for your reps with less manual efforts. Craft Messages that Matter: You can uncover salient aspects about your prospects’ likes and dislikes like their favorite sports, hobby etc. This can help you tailoring your message in a way that grabs their attention and strikes the right chord with them. Target the Right People: With complete picture about your prospects’ company, you can understand the actual stakeholders and invest your efforts with accuracy. With better understanding of the buying committee, your reps are more likely to chase the right prospect and build effective account plans. Predict Success: Having proper data lets your reps understand their buying committee’s behaviour precisely. They can better equip themselves with the essential background information and forecast pipelines accurately. Bonus! Data enrichment can elevate your internal data too. Reps can identify patterns and discover new information by connecting dots and prevent potential customer churn. Our top 7 picks for Data Enrichment Now that we understand the importance of putting your CRM in a better quality. Let’s talk about the top tools that can help you achieve this. Nektar.ai Nektar.ai is a contact and activity capture solution that keeps and recovers client contacts as well as their participation details throughout various stages of the buyer’s journey, thereby becoming an invaluable resource for groups trying to harmonize their CRM procedures. It is first party data platform with zero user adoption, meaning that the admin teams don’t have to worry about adoption and enablement challenges. Why use it? Automated Contact & Opportunity Management: Teams using Nektar can automate the addition, editing and deletion of contacts in Salesforce. Contacts are automatically linked to opportunities so you are able to tell who is really going to make a decision. Its self-healing artificial intelligence (AI) makes sure that actions are taken based on current happenings and new information. Depth and Breadth of Activity Data: It has every single mail and information exchange between buyers and sellers across the customer journey. This enables syncing activity within leads, opportunities, accounts and their contacts for granular contact-level engagement visibility as well. Data Automation: Revenue professionals can define certain logic on

Everything You Need to Know About Sales Territory Mapping RevOps 10 min Successful sales strategies play a key role in achieving business goals. But what drives these strategies from inception to execution, improving sales operations and on-ground performance? Sales territory mapping.  Without the right sales territory map template, your sales team could face challenges, namely: Poor productivity Revenue mismatch or imbalance Subpar revenue performance  Poor customer experience Leading to the loss of clients, and Waste of valuable resources  So, how do you get sales territory mapping right to achieve business goals and grow your revenue? Let’s find out in this blog. Sales Territory Mapping: Setting On-Ground Sales in Motion Sales territory mapping defines and visualizes the area, sales amount, and revenue your sales team will target. It divides and categorizes customers based on specific characteristics within your ideal customer profile (ICP). A sales territory map template also helps you assign categories and customers to the salespersons best equipped to serve them.  It lets you reach the right customers in the right areas with the right characteristics to achieve targets and improve growth.  The task of aligning your sales plan with business goals in the most profitable way lies with sales managers.  From the larger business perspective, sales territory mapping is part of location intelligence. Today, location intelligence helps segment customers and find more relevant target markets for revenue success.  How Is Sales Territory Mapping Instrumental to Business Growth? A sales territory map template does more than act as a blueprint. Here are 6 more ways in which it contributes to growth.  1. Ties Back to Business Goals Sales territory mapping creates a blueprint for achieving your business goals. It clearly lays out sales targets and directs reps to the most profitable customers or verticals by strategically assigning territories. 2. Maintains Balance One of sales territory mapping’s primary objectives is to secure a balanced and fair distribution of work among sales teams. It moves and optimizes resources effectively to maximize revenue potential.  3. Increases Selling Time Reps can increase facetime with clients by cutting down time spent on planning. This is specifically made possible with sales territory mapping tools that decrease planning time from months to minutes.  4. Improves Win Rates Naturally, when reps spend more time selling, they can nurture clients better through the sales funnel. Moreover, each assignment is backed by data. This data offers more visibility into customers and prevents deals from slipping through the cracks.  As a result, reps can improve customer experience and uncover new leads to increase win rates.  5. Boosts Morale A sales territory map template encourages intelligent planning, further improving sales productivity. Additionally, when reps can increase win rates, achieve their quota, and earn more, it boosts their morale. And if reps are happy, it means your attrition rates are lower.  It’s not just that. A sales territory map template also highlights improvement areas useful for coaching.  6. Extracts Hidden Insights Sales territory mapping helps measure sales data by connecting the map to the CRM. Therefore, when multiple salespersons are involved in a deal, you can attribute the sale to the right person.  Recognizing the benefits of sales territory mapping is the first step in setting up your own template. Step two is understanding its different types.  Choosing From 5 Types of Sales Territory Mapping Conventionally, sales territories were based on locations. However, you can customize them today as per your customer, market, or even product needs.  Let’s take a look at the 5 types below.  1. Geography Geographic sales territory mapping is the most commonly used and also the oldest. It classifies your market based on, you guessed it, geographical locations—cities, states, countries, and zip codes.  For example, Sales Team A can serve Texas, while Sales Team B covers California.  To get geographic mapping right, your sales team must have a regional, cultural, and linguistic understanding of the territory they’re allocated.  It’s also important to ensure that the selected sales team is available when customers are active in the designated regions.  2. Product Product-based sales territory mapping can be used when you have multiple offerings. You can categorize and assign reps to specific products or technological offerings.  This method is useful when certain reps have in-depth expertise on specific products. For example, Team A has expertise in CRM solutions and is assigned to this offering, while Team B caters to clients looking for Digital Advertising software.   Assigning your reps to the right products will ensure they can sell to clients more convincingly.  3. Customer  The third way to divide your sales territories is based on specific customer characteristics like demographics or roles.  For instance, Sales Team A may sell to clients with a yearly revenue of $500,000. On the other hand, Sales Team B focuses on the higher margin clients with yearly revenue of $1 million and upwards.  4. Industry  Industry-based sales territory mapping assigns reps to specific industries or verticals.  It works best when your product caters to individuals or businesses from multiple industries.  For example, Team A sells to the construction industry, while Team B covers the education sector. Similarly, Team A could be selling to the education industry overall, while Team B handles specific verticals–like universities or higher education–and Team C is responsible for schools.  5. Sales Channel An upcoming type of sales territory map template categorizes territories per the sales channels your reps or clients use.  That’s because buyers now use ten or more channels, on average, as they move through the buying process. They use a combination of digital self-serve channels for certain activities and videos or in-person channels for others.  Consider this example. Team A is responsible for selling via digital channels like social media, and Team B sells through offline channels such as cold calling.  You may also get more granular by assigning reps with expertise in certain platforms to those mediums. For instance, Rep A sells via emails, and Rep B may use LinkedIn.  Knowing the key types of sales territories is awesome. But figuring out the type of

5 Steps to Navigate Buying Groups in 2025: A RevOps Guide RevOps 10 min In today’s business environment, B2B buying is never just one person. According to Forrester Research, more than half of global business buyers purchase in complex buying scenarios that include more people, more departments, and generally higher price points. And this buying group can be made up of 7 to 20 people! Unlocking the power of buying groups is a crucial aspect of the B2B landscape. This blog is a synopsis of our conversation with revenue operations leader, Nandini Karkare. She is currently the SVP of RevOps at Zywave. Nandini suggests strategic steps to navigate through the realms of Revenue Operations and helps uncover the strategies, insights, and best practices that constitute a comprehensive guide to mastering the dynamics of buying groups. Read on to get actionable tips on how you can navigate buying groups in 2025 (and beyond). And implement the learnings to create a winning GTM motion. Here are the 5 steps Nandini recommends: 1. Decode Your Buying Groups The buying groups typically consist of members from departments and they all contribute different aspects. It is critical to understand the scope of decision-making including the people who play the most significant roles in making the call. Gartner’s report on B2B Buying highlights that 77% of B2B purchases involve a buying group of four or more people. PS: The key stakeholder can turn out someone altogether different from who you had building a relationship with all along. a. Capturing Buying Group Members   Effective buying group management means considering not just decision-makers but influential stakeholders across departments. Misidentifying key players or focusing solely on the main contact risks derailing the sale. (i) How can you map the entire buying group efficiently? Leverage internal and external data to identify the key players Segment the Group by Role and Influence (ii) Not everyone in the buying group holds equal power or influence. Segment them into categories: Decision-makers (who give the final heads-up) Influencers (who sway the decision) Users (who use the product and provide feedback) Budget owners b. The Role Transition Within a Buying Group   Moving the focus from a buying group to a renewal or expansion committee includes knowing precisely who remains in the relationship, as well as who becomes more active as an account grows. (i) New roles may emerge in a Buying Group Technical or operational leaders may become more influential post sale, since they are now using the product. (ii) The focus shifts from buying to renewal The interaction should be more about the return on investment (ROI) of the product placed on the market, ongoing value delivery, and ongoing needs. (iii) Alignment between the buying groups and renewal committee Leveraging the same enthusiasm and relationships generated at the first-buying stage helps in anchoring the transitions and preventing any drop-offs in engagement. Related Resource: Navigate Enterprise Buying Committees: Strategies for Driving Alignment c. Understand the Personal and Collective Priorities of a Buying Group As per McKinsey & Company, B2B buying decisions increasingly require engagement across departments, with 60% of purchasing committees including members from outside traditional procurement, like IT and HR. (i)Alignment Between C-Suite and Technical Teams Decisions aren’t Made in a Vacuum Collaboration between C-suite and technical teams ensures a holistic approach to solving customer problems, creating stronger, more sustainable relationships Their cross departmental collaboration can help with: (ii) Alignment on Strategic Goals C suite executives need technical assistance to translate their strategic vision to reality that also aligns with company-wide objectives. (iii) Technical Validation These insights guide the C-suite in making informed decisions that fit technical infrastructure and future-proofing. (iv) Cross-functional Communication Bridging the gap between these two groups involves continuous, open communication, ensuring that technical evaluations don’t delay business goals but instead support them cohesively.   iii. Understand the Product Take product demos, listen to sales calls, and use tools that show how the product is sold. This helps in understanding the customer needs better. iv. Dive into Your CRM Understand your CRM (whether Salesforce or HubSpot) to assess how the data is organized. This is to check whether it’s easy to use, and identify immediate improvements. The CRM should be the central source of truth, with other tools supporting it. The data should be unified with easier adoption for the teams. v. Build Trust Internally Establish trust within your teams by listening carefully, asking questions about how RevOps can help, and addressing quick fixes to show you’re there to help. Having this trust shows them that you’re here to support their success. Quick wins, such as small fixes that make people’s jobs easier, helps in establishing credibility early. 2. Establish Clear KPIs   i. Understanding Team KPIs It is important to ask you stakeholders about the KPIs that matter to understand their goals and what their expectations are. ii. Aligning KPIs Across Teams Different departments oftentimes work in silos. RevOps should strive to align these departments and check if these KPIs match the overall business objectives. Gaps must be closed if their KPIs don’t align. iii. Setting RevOps KPIs As you approach the end of the first 30 days, start establishing RevOps-specific KPIs that match company goals, which may involve metrics like revenue increase, conversion rates, or improvements in overall efficiency. 3. Tech Stack Audit Deep dive into the existing tools that your company is using. Identify all redundancies, and find opportunities to streamline the entire tech stack. i. Map Out Tools Compile a list of all tools used by teams, noting their purpose and how they work with the CRM. ii. Evaluate Use and Cost Determine if tools are actively used or if there are duplicates. Look for cost-saving opportunities by consolidating tools when possible. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVDJ9KI1tGw&t=869s Next 30 days – Alignment and Control The next 30 days marks a shift from discovery to alignment. The goals should be to create cohesion between departments (e.g., Sales, Marketing) and laying down effective controls. The improvements need to be implemented without overwhelming the teams. This phase combines