• by Ray Schultz , February 12, 2020

B2B brands, for all their success, are challenged when it comes to revenue. 

Of those polled for a new study by Leandata and Sales Hacker, 78% agree that revenue growth is a challenge. And 27.94% strongly concur.  

This problems are largely caused by failure to integrate departments and to create a Revenue Operations structure made up of SalesOps, MarketingOps and Customer Success Ops.

“When sales, marketing and customer success aren’t integrated and aligned, and they’re not “singing from the same hymnal” either strategically, organizationally or operationally, this creates fundamental misalignment across the revenue chain,” the study states.

At the same time, 95% agree that the customer experience is the key to unlocking growth. And 59.27% strongly agree. 

In addition, 84% say that sales and marketing share revenue responsibility. Yet 37% admit that these functions “aren’t optimally aligned within their own companies to maximize revenue-growth potential,” the study continues. 

Of the executives polled, 31% had a revenue operations group at their company in 2019. And 27% were building one. 

In 2018, only 20% had a revenue operations group and 15% were building one.

Of the companies polled, 16.87% have centralized SalesOps, MarketingOps and Customer Success Ops teams. Another 28.82% are somewhat centralized, and 37.09% have no formal revenue operations team, but are virtually aligned.

On a scale of 1 to 10, the obstacles include: 

• Low understanding/awareness of Revenue Ops: 5.35
• Disconnected systems + inconsistent data: 5.23
• Leadership support: 5.17
• Organizational complexity: 5.15
• Organizational maturity: 4.8
• Inconsistent and siloed data: 4.61
• Resourcing: 4.52
• Culture: 4.5

Of the firms with a centralized Revenue Operations team, 26.06% place the responsibility with a chief revenue officer (CRO), 19.91% with the CEO, 17.14% with the COO, 11.34% with the CFO, 9.96% with some other title in the firm, 9.09% with a chief sales officer (CSO) and 6.49% with the CMO.

Leandata and Sales Hacker surveyed 2,462 B2B sales and marketing professionals.