Top 10 Relationship Intelligence Tools for 2025 RevOps 10 min When it comes to sales, building strong relationships is essential.  But let’s face it, the process can be incredibly time-consuming and demands a significant amount of effort from the sales reps. But here’s the kicker: Today, 44% of millennial buyers prefer minimal contact with a sales rep during the buying process. That means your sales rep has ~5% of the prospect’s time to establish a connection. It’s tougher than ever to develop relationships from a seller’s point of view. Does this mean that your reps should stop building relationships? Should your reps just try and sell whatever they can to whoever you find? The answer to that is a resounding NO. In the digital era, data and insights are what drive sales . They have the potential to give out more information than you know about your prospects. CRMs capture all possible data, churning it and spurting out information that otherwise was not visible earlier. But wait. There’s more to sales success than your CRM. To truly understand your prospects, you need to dig deeper to uncover hidden insights to help close your deals faster. That means mining your CRM data for a wealth of valuable information that will give you a competitive edge. This is exactly what relationship intelligence does. What is a Relationship Intelligence Tool? Picture this: You have access to a wealth of data from your clients, colleagues, and partners, but it’s scattered across various touchpoints like emails, phone calls, messages, meetings, and more.  How do you make sense of all that information? That’s where relationship intelligence comes in.  By pooling in, processing, and analyzing all that data, relationship intelligence technology provides invaluable insights, builds stronger relationships, and helps you make smarter decisions.   With relationship intelligence, you can discover a treasure of data-driven and actionable insights that support the organization’s understanding of the customer, identify the optimal solutions, and determine the best communication strategies. This results in a more tailored and informed approach to prospects to maximize the best chance of a positive outcome. Your prospects are more than just a phone number or an email. Relationship intelligence broadens your potential and plays a strong role in connecting the dots from other sources. It supplements your CRM, finding other & useful opportunities to close prospects, otherwise not visible to us. Why Does a Relationship Intelligence Tool Matter? Enterprise-based selling in B2B is no walk in the park.  With a plethora of relationship intelligence tools out in the market, organizations are spoilt for choice. However, tools that leverage AI/ML, offering data-driven intelligence with invaluable and actionable insights, will be the ones that will dominate the market. On the flip side, the process of onboarding a tool no longer rests in the hands of a single decision-maker. Gartner states that the number of buyers involved in the last decade has increased from 5 to 20. A potential account will have multiple stakeholders who will be involved in the decision-making process. Hence, it becomes critical for sales reps to identify and engage with key stakeholders regularly. With the rise of digital selling, organizations can now track the process of selling in a more in-depth manner. All forms of digital outreaches and communication with prospects can now be tracked, analyzed, and acted upon with the help of relationship intelligence.  Today, with markets being down and companies being extremely meticulous in their choice of tools to invest, having a relationship intelligence tech stack will be the game-changer. Here’s how 1. Showcasing a single view of all your relationships with your prospects Having relationship intelligence data will bring together all the stakeholders in one view, so sales reps have a clear idea of the sales cycle the account is currently in.  2. Identify every stakeholder involved With the buying process evolving constantly, the final decision often lies not with one but multiple owners. In other words, for a sales rep, multithreading is the best way forward. And in this process, it’s very easy to confuse the right person to engage with, especially if there is a handover involved.  Sales reps often fail to map out the stakeholders involved. The dots are not connected and not visible, which can lead to confusion and no clarity to other higher authorities. Relationship intelligence tools fill these gaps. It will identify each & every stakeholder involved at every stage of the selling process, bring them together, and map out the relationship of each, and provide all the information about these stakeholders. Not only that, but the data also provide insights to those who are frequently engaging and also point out the next best champion to continue the sales process seamlessly if the key decision maker is unavailable at any stage of the sales process. 3. Give detailed insights about each prospect The thing about relationship intelligence tools is that not only do they provide details in one place, but they also show you the best possible way to contact and reach out to your prospects. It can be email, phone calls, or video calls; it will give you solutions that are sure to boost your process of converting. 4. Recover lost leads In the world of sales, not all leads or prospects will convert.  If the target is to convert 2 leads in a month with a value of X, sales reps need to build a pipeline of at least 10 leads with a value of 10X. This results in 8 leads that will not convert or be disqualified or lost in the process. However, these 8 leads don’t have to be lost forever. With relationship intelligence, you can identify the most engaged buyers and reignite the relationship with them. And here’s the kicker: the relationship intelligence technology considers all the data even before onboarding the tool.  This kind of intelligence will only unleash hidden superpowers for your sales reps. Who knows, your lost prospect’s business priorities might have changed over time, and getting back to them might just make all the difference. 4. Discover trends in

Top 5 Trends That Will Impact Sales Operations in 2025 RevOps 10 min Sales operations has become one of the fastest growing functions over the last few years. According to LinkedIn’s State of Sales Operations 2021 Report, the number of sales operations professionals increased by 38% around the world between 2018 and 2020. What’s the reason behind this growth? Bradley Gray, Director of Business Development at Enterprise Holdings attributes two reasons for the growth in this role. There has been a significant increase in the amount of data that gets generated within organizations. The proliferation of data is creating a need for sales operations to generate contextualised insights for sales teams to succeed.   RELATED RESOURCE : SALES OPERATIONS TRENDS FOR 2025   A well run sales operations function enables businesses to operate efficiently with data-driven decisions, and also identify gaps that exist in the sales process, and help fill them up through analytical insights.  In short, a great sales operations function can help an organization unlock massive productivity gains.  To make the most out of your sales operations function, it is important to be aware of the trends that will shape in 2025 (and beyond). Let’s take a look. 1. Multithreading Will Be a Key Sales Tactic The world is in the midst of a great reshuffle for talent. The turnover among corporate director-level-and above, that constitutes the majority of B2B buyers, increased by 31% in 2021. With key people in the B2B buying committee quitting jobs so often, many deals fall apart because reps fail to develop strong relationships with more than one buyer. And with an average of 6.8 decision makers in every B2B purchase, not having strong relationships with all of the key players within the buying committee can be a big risk. When a key stakeholder leaves the organization, reps are forced to start from scratch, causing 80% of them to lose deals. Having just one primary contact for an account, or single-threading, thus increases the chances of missing out on deals. This is where adopting multithreading as a sales practice becomes extremely crucial. Multithreading is when reps form relationships with multiple stakeholders on the buying committee of an account.  This way, even if the primary stakeholder quits the organization, reps can capitalize on the relationships they have with the rest of the stakeholders within that account. Multithreading increases the chances of closing a deal by 16%. Successful sales teams in 2025 will master multithreading by gathering champions, influencers and decision-makers, and engaging with them on a regular basis. 2. An Increase in Regulations Will Impact Tech Stack Decisions There has been an increase in the number of regulations across the globe around protection of consumer information and data privacy.  Non-compliance of these regulations can be a huge cost. Organizations lose an average of $4 million in revenue due to a single non-compliance event.  To prevent such events from taking place, sales and revenue leaders must narrow down on their tech investments from a compliance-first lens. With the world increasingly moving towards a cookie-less world, highly compliant first-party data will become key in helping sales teams make data-driven decisions. First-party data is the information that is handed off with consent from a user to a company. This can be from sources like email, calendar, Zoom or other tools that buyers use.  For example, organizations can use their own first-party data to drive contextual insights that can help them make their sales operations function more efficient, while staying compliant with GDPR regulations.  Forward thinking leaders will realize this and take control of their first-party data in 2025, and use it to make powerful data-driven decisions.  Technologies like artificial intelligence can help enrich CRM with first-party buyer and seller interaction data. Nektar has built an advanced data capture solution that intelligently connects first-party data to the CRM and enriches it for sales teams. 3. AI Based Guided Selling Will Help Sellers Win More Deals B2B sales is getting increasingly complex, with buyers getting bombarded with information across channels, and sellers tackling multiple tasks and responsibilities while chasing their quota. AI based guided selling is helping sellers navigate this complex selling environment by helping them improve their sales execution through a data-driven approach.  Along with increasing productivity, AI based guided selling helps identify patterns that lead to more intelligent business decision making, ultimately helping in revenue generation. The pandemic exposed cracks in many organization’s sales processes. Knowing that sales process discipline must be improved to increase the chances of closing new deals, sales leaders are investigating new data-driven, AI-based guided selling functions for improving sales execution. Tad Travis, VP, Gartner AI-based guided selling offers prescriptive as well as predictive insights to sellers to close more deals.  From a prescriptive lens, it recommends the next best actions for sales reps and managers to undertake within the sales process. As an example, organizations can use AI to improve their playbook compliance within teams for consistent selling.  From a predictive lens, it offers insights that help identify lead indicators to make the sales process more efficient.  For example, by having insights on the activity data of sales reps, sales managers can define which deals are real and which need to be eliminated from the pipeline. With such functionalities, sales teams can decide on what to do next to move a relationship, deal or quote forward on the basis of analytics (rather than relying on instinct to make decisions). 2025 will see organizations add AI based guided selling solutions to their tech stack. 4. Training in Consultative Sales Will Take Priority Today’s B2B buyers prefer to conduct their own research before they speak with sales reps.  According to research, most buyers engage with more than 13 pieces of content before connecting with a seller.  Forrester’s research found that buyers went to all forums for information in 2021 – from webinars and online events to learn about the category and competitors, to speaking with peers and industry experts to have their questions answered. These changes in buyer preferences have raised the bar for sales. Understanding the buyer’s intent and offering them personalized solutions

Top 10 Sales Methodologies to Use in 2025 RevOps 10 min Every business out there is trying to sell something, whether it’s tangible products, services, knowledge, or software.  But the real question is – are they keeping up with the changing trends in customer buying patterns?  Customers have become wiser, and their preferences & behavior have evolved with time. To cement this statement, today, 67% of customers now prefer self-service over speaking to a company representative. As a result, businesses must tailor their sales methods to meet such changing needs.  It’s not enough to just sell something; they need to do it in a way that resonates with the customer and meets their expectations.  Businesses often struggle to do just this without a structured and strategic approach.  After-effects? Poor sales results and low adoption.  Implementing the right sales methodology can help you stay on track and focus on the customer journey. But there are many sales methodologies out there that can be confusing. Which is why we have created this exclusive guide for you. In this article, we will walk you through the basics of sales methodologies and the top 10 sales methodologies to use for selling to the modern customer of today. Keep reading!  What is a Sales Methodology? Sales methodologies are a systematic and strategic approach to the sales process. They involve a set of principles and practices that guide sales teams in their interactions with customers. The ultimate goal is to gain a better understanding of customers’ needs, foster trust, and ultimately increase the chances of closing more deals. The history of sales methodologies dates back to the early 20th century when sales techniques were mainly focused on personal persuasion and hard-selling tactics. However, in the 1950s, the concept of consultative selling emerged, which prioritized building relationships with customers and understanding their needs. This approach got popular in the book “Spin Selling” by Neil Rackham in the late 1980s. Since then, many sales methodologies have emerged, each with its unique features and benefits. Some of the most popular sales methodologies include the Challenger Sale, Solution Selling, MEDDIC, SPIN Selling, and Value Selling, among others. But, how are these methodologies different from the sales process? That’s what the next section is about. Sales Methodology vs Sales Process Sales methodology is a framework that guides salespeople in their approach to selling, with the aim of understanding customer needs, fostering trust, and winning more deals. It includes principles and practices that inform the sales team’s overall strategy for selling, such as how to approach customers,  how to position products or services,  how to handle objections and more.  On the other hand, a sales process is a series of steps that a sales team takes to move a potential customer from initial contact to closing a sale. The process typically includes stages such as  prospecting,  lead qualification,  needs assessment, presentation, and demonstration,  negotiation, and closing.  This process can be mapped out in a flowchart or diagram. To be precise, sales methodology is an overarching philosophy to sell while the sales process outlines the specific steps that reps need to follow for carrying out that sales methodology. Advantages of Sales Methodologies Sales methodologies can greatly help a business and fuel its sales efforts in more ways than one.  1. Increased efficiency It provides a structured approach to selling, helping salespeople to be more organized and efficient in their work. 2. Improved customer satisfaction It helps to build trust with customers by focusing on understanding their needs and pain points. 3. Personalized sales It enables salespeople to tailor their approach to different customers, based on their unique buying motivations and preferences. 4. Better collaboration It facilitates teamwork among sales team members, who can work together more effectively when they are all following the same methodology. 5. Measurable sales efforts It makes it easier to track progress and measure success, as each step of the sales process is clearly defined and measurable. 6. Sales optimization It helps to identify areas for improvement, as businesses can analyze their sales data to see which parts of the methodology are working well and which need to be adjusted. 7. Guaranteed sales It leads to better sales results as salespeople are equipped with a proven approach to selling that has been shown to be successful in similar situations. This is not it! Having sales methodologies in place has immense benefits and it is more like having a map in the jungle. It helps your sales teams navigate through the complex and often unpredictable sales landscape.  With a well-defined methodology, they can stay on the path toward achieving their sales goals and ultimately, closing more deals and bringing more money into your business. How to Choose the Best Sales Methodology for your Business As an industry, we cling to this incorrect notion that there’s a single best way to sell. We select a sales process or methodology that we believe is a “best practice,’ and we tell our sellers to repeat that same sales approach with every customer in every circumstance. It’s a fundamentally flawed strategy . Dr. Leff Bonney, Marketing Professor When it comes to selecting the right sales methodology for your business, there are a few key things that you simply shouldn’t ignore. It’s essential to take the time to carefully consider these factors and not rush into a decision without proper evaluation.  1. Needs of your target audience Your customers’ needs, preferences, and buying habits should be at the center of your decision of selecting a sales methodology.  For instance, if your customers tend to do their own research and make decisions independently, a self-service approach like Value Selling Framework could be a good choice. On the other hand, if your customers prefer a more interactive approach, a hands-on technique like Spin Selling might be a better fit.  2. Sales cycle & complexity The duration and complexity of the sales process can be different for every business. It depends on a few factors like what you’re selling, how the decision-making works, and how many people are involved in

Growing Beyond $1M ARR: Mistakes to Avoid in the Valley of Death RevOps 10 min If you are a SaaS business that has crossed the $1m ARR mark, congratulations! You belong to a group of <1% of businesses that manage to reach this number. A bigger challenge lies ahead in the form of the valley of death. Only 4% of SaaS companies reach $1 million in revenue, and only 0.4% make it to $10 million. This is the Valley of Death that has eliminated countless businesses. Scaling to $10 million ARR and beyond is where a lot of promising startups dissolve. As revenue numbers increase, that number shrinks even more.  What is the Valley of Death? The valley of death is that period in the life of a start-up where it has begun operations, but hasn’t started generating revenue. From a start-up receiving its initial capital contribution until it finally starts to generate revenue is what this period covers.  The valley of death is a challenging period for start-ups. This period marks a heightened risk of failure. The longer the time spent in the valley of death, the higher the chances of the company fizzling out. Surviving this death valley is considered a significant milestone for a start-up. It signals better chances of the company reaching maturity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwF4TeXSQ4&t=5s Carving the Journey from $0-$50 Million According to Abhijeet Vijayvergiya, CEO at Nektar.ai, all start-ups go through similar challenges and they have to navigate through them. The challenges a startup will face at $0-$1m journey will be very different from the challenges at $10-$25m, or $25-$50m. Each stage requires a different approach. Let’s deep dive. 1. Getting to $1 million –  Find your Product Market Fit   In the 0-1 journey, focusing on the core mission of why a startup was formulated is key. This is the stage where founders try to validate their product’s value proposition. They answer questions like: Is there a market for my product? Is there a product fit to that market? Focus is key in this stage. Trying to do a bunch of different things and picking up on what works can be a recipe for disaster. $0-1m is more about taking calibrated steps that help a founder validate their value proposition. A lot of startups fail to go beyond this stage is because of a lack of focus. It’s very easy to get distracted. I think a lot of startups die because they lose focus and they get distracted from their core mission. This does not mean that you can’t pivot. You definitely should pivot when you evolve as a company, you achieve product market fit or you see traction. But at the same time, you should not be doing too many things. That’s a very common mistake I have seen that a lot of start-ups make. Figure out what you’re solving for. Every start-up starts with a vision. You have a problem that you feel is unsolved and something that you can uniquely solve in a way nobody is solving it today. And you can do it X times better in case it’s already sold by somebody. Abhijeet Vijayvergiya Trying to force growth is what makes several startups fail to go beyond this stage. Abhijeet says that an initial team member will always see whether there is a product market fit or not. He advises founders to not force the scale of motion till the time they hit that product market fit.  In the 0-1 million journey, it’s important for any startup to stay focused, get to that product market fit, iterate fast, evolve to solve the problem that was intended for, and do all of it in a way that there is a commercial value attached to it. 2. $1m – $10m – Double Down on what Has Worked This is where the valley of death begins. A stage where you are with a million dollars in revenue with a core value proposition that is validated. But you have this looming danger of scaling to $10 million, where a very minuscule number of startups are able to successfully achieve. So how do you do that? According to Abhijeet, if a startup has achieved product market fit, they will be in a great position to start scaling. He warns against startups starting to open new markets, launch new products, or start talking to different sectors of customers, all in a haste to reach 10 million ARR. What’s important is to constantly look at the problem that the company has solved and how they have solved it. Learn from that and templatize all those learnings into a playbook.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSI_OSEpot8 Do more of what has worked for you. Just doing this makes the $1-$10m journey quite easy. In my past experience, we figured out how the founders sold to the first 5, 10, 20 and 50 people. We could really onboard sales teams in a way that they started delivering their first deal within the first 6 months of joining in a new market. Abhijeet Vijayvergiya Abhijeet also emphasizes on the importance of customer retention while talking of his experience at Capillary Technologies. He says, “We did a great job at retaining our customers. We still have the lowest churn rate in the industry. We’ve always focused on delivering that delight to our users and customers so that they become our evangelists.”  Surviving the valley of death requires founders to understand the pain their company is solving for. They need to be really looking at why the company or the product exists in the first place. Founders also need to find a way to covert the tribal knowledge floating in their minds into a working playbook that can be executed. “The first and foremost thing that you should do once you hit a product market fit & you’re looking to scale and ramp up is to articulate that knowledge that is in your head into a playbook and templatize it. That gives you a solid foundation and a scalable model,” advises Abhijeet. 3. The Journey from $10m to

A 30-60-90 Day Guide for First-Time Directors of Revenue Operations RevOps 10 min Starting a new job as a Director of Revenue Operations is an exciting opportunity to make a significant impact on a company’s revenue growth. To ensure success in this role, it’s essential to have a strategic plan that guides your actions during the crucial first three months. Here’s a 30-60-90 day plan that will help you strategically manage revenue operations and drive sustainable growth. We recently spoke to Hassan Irshad, Director of RevOps at FEVTutor. He shared his approach to this powerful framework, demonstrating how each phase (30, 60, and 90 days) builds strategically upon the last to deliver alignment, trust, and sustained improvement. By breaking down complex goals into achievable milestones, the 30-60-90 day approach empowers RevOps leaders to initiate meaningful change without overwhelming teams. For all the RevOps leaders, it’s a way to approach change with purpose, driving measurable impact and laying the groundwork for long-term success.  The 30-60–90 day framework must be an indispensable tool and here is how you can implement progressive, sustainable growth strategies from day one. First 30 days for a Director of Revenue Operations The purpose should be to gather insights and understand the organization, especially the needs and challenges of different teams. 1. Goals for first 30 days:   i. Meet Key Stakeholders Meet with cross departmental teams like Finance, HR, and Sales to understand their goals, challenges, and priorities. ii. Document Everything Create a “lay of the land” document summarizing findings on different team goals, challenges, and processes.   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 further exploration with actionable improvements with the primary task being bringing the teams into sync.   1. Ways to bring your teams together i. Encouraging cross-team collaboration by addressing silos and ensuring all teams work toward shared quarterly or company-wide goals. ii. By creating alignment, you help teams see RevOps as a support system rather than an enforcer. This keeps communication channels open and creates buy-in. iii. Based on your findings, introduce controls wherever needed to improve workflow. Example: If close dates aren’t being recorded properly, this could skew reports. Meet with sales, identify the root cause (e.g., manual data entry that is taking too much of a reps’ time), and provide solutions or tools to make their tasks easier. Ensure that controls are practical and developed with the trust built in the first 30 days. Foster internal consensus within teams so that these improvements are adopted seamlessly. 2. Navigate Organizational Politics (i) Barrier Removal Larger organizations may have internal politics or ingrained processes that resist change. Find an internal “sponsor” who trusts and supports RevOps initiatives and can authorize actions to navigate any resistance. (ii) Trust and Consistency As you implement changes, make sure your efforts consistently demonstrate how RevOps can make work easier and more efficient for everyone. 3. Evolving the Tech Stack (i) Assessing Tech Needs If tools aren’t fully integrated (e.g., a tool not writing data back to the CRM), identify their gaps and consider evolving the tech stack. (ii) Holistic View Use insights from the discovery and alignment phases to start envisioning necessary tech improvements that align with company goals. Beginning of the 90-Day Phase: Vision and Execution This phase, described as “Vision and Execution,” involves shaping and executing a strategy based on insights gathered from the discovery and alignment phases. a. Roadmap Creation Create a roadmap covering the next two quarters, focusing on long-term, high-impact changes that align with business goals. Use learnings based on stakeholder needs, organizational goals, and the findings from the first 60 days i. Set Priorities Collaborate with end users (Sales, Marketing, Customer Success) to understand their pressing needs and align the roadmap with these needs. ii. Strategic Execution Prioritize initiatives that will have immediate revenue impact or