Without accurate information about B2B contact data regarding the buying committee, GTM (Go-to-Market) teams miss out on numerous opportunities, leading to visibility gaps in relationship and engagement. To address this challenge, we explore how revenue leaders can effectively manage it in this blog.
We narrate our conversation with Shantanu Shekhar, Gong’s Senior Director of Sales Strategy & Operations. Shantanu has experience scaling, optimizing, and transforming businesses across various regions, including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. Currently, he is responsible for driving sales operations and go-to-market strategy for Gong in EMEA.
Listen to the entire conversation here:
Defining RevOps
RevOps is based on the principle that revenue generation is not limited to a single department or team but involves various stakeholders across the organization.
While different individuals and companies may have their own interpretations of RevOps, there are three core pillars that commonly define its scope: Go-To-Market (GTM), Core Operations, and Data Insights.
1. Go-To-Market (GTM)
The GTM pillar of RevOps focuses on the strategies, tactics, and processes involved in bringing products or services to market and acquiring customers. It encompasses marketing, sales, customer success, and customer support. The goal is to ensure these teams are aligned and working together efficiently to drive revenue growth.
2. Core Operations
The Core Operations pillar of RevOps is concerned with streamlining and optimizing the operational aspects of the revenue generation process. This includes activities like order management, contract administration, billing, and collections. By enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of these operations, RevOps aims to eliminate bottlenecks, reduce friction, and improve the overall customer experience.
3. Data Insights
Data Insights are a crucial part of RevOps, enabling informed decision-making and continuous improvement. This pillar involves gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data related to revenue generation processes, customer behavior, market trends, and performance metrics. By leveraging data insights, RevOps teams can identify areas of improvement, uncover revenue opportunities, and implement data-driven strategies.
The Evolution of B2B Selling
Over the past decade, B2B selling has undergone significant changes influenced by multiple factors, including the last three years characterized by the COVID-19 pandemic and an unpredictable economy. Here are a few ways we at Gong have seen the B2B selling process change in the past two to three years:
1. Who do we sell to?
One notable shift is the transformation of the buyer-seller dynamic. Rather than solely targeting decision-makers, B2B sales now revolve around engaging with buyer groups. This change is driven by the increasing number of interactions buyers engage in before purchasing, which has risen from 17 to 27 interactions, representing a substantial 58% increase between 2019 and 2021.
2. How do we sell to them?
In terms of the selling process itself, the adoption of omnichannel approaches has become crucial in the B2B space. Self-checkout and self-service options, even for significant transactions, have gained prominence. Customers now prefer to buy directly from a company’s website, reflecting the growing importance of digital channels. Additionally, the prevalence of remote work and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic have reduced the number of in-person B2B sales meetings. Currently, less than a third of all B2B sales occur through face-to-face interactions, highlighting the shift towards remote sales methodologies.
3. How do they make the buying decision?
The availability of information has significantly influenced how customers make buying decisions in the B2B space. With platforms like G2, customers can access valuable insights into vendor performance and compare different options. This easy access to information empowers customers to form informed views even before engaging with sellers directly. Consequently, B2B sellers must adapt to this new landscape by providing relevant, transparent information and positioning themselves effectively to meet customer expectations.
Gong’s Way of Dealing with Data Hygiene
Data Hygiene is the holy grail of RevOps. To maintain data hygiene, it is essential to understand the various entry points and sources of contact data.
These entry points can include manual data entry by sales and customer support teams, data imports from external sources, web forms, and automated data capture from integrated systems like CRM and marketing automation platforms.
Contact data can originate from multiple sources, such as website registrations, lead generation campaigns, customer interactions, and third-party data providers.
Here are a couple of things we keep in mind to ensure data hygiene at Gong:
- When adding data to the system, specific criteria and minimum thresholds should be established to ensure the quality and relevance of the information. This can include verifying the accuracy of contact details, validating email addresses, and ensuring that relevant fields are filled appropriately.
- Processes and systems can be implemented to address any gaps in contact data. These may include data enrichment services that leverage external data sources to fill in missing or incomplete information. Additionally, automation tools can help capture data from various touchpoints, such as email campaigns or web forms, and automatically populate the relevant fields in the database.
The Problem of Data Duplication in RevOps
To avoid data duplication and maintain data integrity, it is crucial to implement certain practices that address this issue. Two key pointers in achieving this are establishing an enrichment process and ensuring individual accountability within the organization.
1.Enrichment process
When adding data to your system, it’s important to have an enrichment process instead of simply adding new data without consideration. The enrichment process involves evaluating the existing data for potential duplicates before incorporating new information.
2. Individual accountability
It is essential to make people within the organization accountable for maintaining data quality and avoiding duplication. Assign clear roles and responsibilities for data management and establish guidelines or protocols for data entry and maintenance.
How Nektar Empowers RevOps with B2B Contact Data
Nektar’s no-code platform for Revenue Operations automatically synchronizes all contact and sales activity data, eliminating the need for manual data entry by your sales representatives.
This synchronization occurs seamlessly, without any additional effort or the requirement to adopt new tools. Our platform seamlessly integrates with all the communication and pipeline tracking tools you currently use to engage with prospects and manage your sales processes.
Here are a few ways Nektar enriches B2B contact data for revenue operations:
- Nektar initiates a secure API integration with your existing technology stack, encompassing tools such as email, calendar, LinkedIn, video conferencing, and various other Go-to-Market (GTM) platforms.
- Once the connection is established, Nektar’s artificial intelligence (AI) conducts a thorough scan of your email bodies, call transcripts, and other sources to identify pertinent sales contacts, meetings, emails, and valuable insights. These insights may include mentions of competitors and identified next steps that might have been hidden or overlooked.
- Nektar enhances each account and opportunity by providing essential sales data and insights, resulting in an accelerated pipeline generation and execution.
We address the B2B contact data challenge by solving the foundational problem of GTM silos – dirty data. Nektar unifies contact and activity data capture, streamlining GTM throughout the customer journey.
You get clear pipeline visibility for a true view of revenue intelligence. Accurate and complete CRM data creates a single source of truth for actionable insights, so leaders and teams can make informed decisions.
Nektar also integrates across the revenue tech hub to maximize ROI from your tech stack.
To learn more about how Nektar fits into the RevOps model, contact our team.
But why stop there? We also consolidated our ultimate guide to RevOps roadmap ebook after speaking to 150+ revenue leaders. In this free guide, you’ll find templates, checklists and plans on how to build your very own RevOps roadmap!
