[Book Review] A Pragmatic "How-To" Manual for Revenue Operations

Source:  Kogan Page Limited

The 2023 LinkedIn Jobs on the Rise list identified Head of Revenue Operations (a/k/a Chief Revenue Officer) as the fastest growing job title in the United States. 

In a 2024 survey of operations professionals by Openprise, 35% of the respondents said their company had a formal revenue operations (RevOps) department, and another 32.5% said their company had a functional RevOps team (but not a formal department).

These data points demonstrate that revenue operations has become an important management technique for many B2B companies.

Interest in revenue operations has been increasing because astute business leaders have recognized that the activities of their customer-facing functions (marketing, sales, customer service/customer success, etc.) should be coordinated and managed as components of a larger revenue generation process.

A new book by Sean Lane and Laura Adint - The Revenue Operations Manual:  How to build a high-growth, predictable and scalable business (Kogan Page, 2024) - seeks to provide a blueprint and instruction manual for building a high-performing revenue operations function.

Sean Lane and Laura Adint are well-qualified to write about revenue operations. Lane is a founding partner of BeaconGTM, a consulting firm that works with CEOs and revenue leaders to improve go-to-market execution. He previously spent over five years building the operations teams at Drift.

Laura Adint has 25 years of experience with technology companies and consulting with a specialty in operations. She was the Vice President of Field Operations at Drift, and she also served as the Vice President of Sales and Services Operations and Adaptive Insights.

What's In the Book

The Revenue Operations Manual contains an Introduction and 25 chapters organized in four major parts. Each chapter discusses a vital component of a world-class revenue operations function or an activity or skill that will enable an individual to become a successful revenue operations leader or an effective RevOps team member.

In the Introduction, Lane and Adint define "revenue operations" in terms of the business outcomes they contend the function should be designed to achieve. They write, "Revenue operations transforms siloed, unpredictable businesses into high-achieving, predictable, and scalable revenue machines."

The authors also use the Introduction to roll out what they call "The Revenue Operations Mindset." This mindset consists of six principles that reflect how individuals involved in revenue operations ("Operators") should view their work and role in the business. The six elements of The Revenue Operations Mindset are:

• "Operators are strategic partners, not a support function."
• "Operators focus on outcomes, not inputs."
• "Operators are the perfect blend of strategic and tactical."
• "Operators are lifelong learners and not afraid to be proven wrong."
• "Operators champion their work and are proud of the impact they create."
• "Operators believe in constant, incremental improvements and a 'better, better, never done' approach."

Part One (Chapters 1-3) of the book discusses when it's time for a company to invest in revenue operations and explains what Operators need to know about their company's business and how they can gain that knowledge.

In Part Two (Chapters 4-13), Lane and Adint discuss several key building blocks of a high-performing revenue operations function.

The authors use Part Three (Chapters 14-18) of the book to explain why the revenue operations team must form strong partnerships with the customer-facing functions of the business. They also offer several strategies and tactics the RevOps team can use to build such partnerships.

In Part Four (Chapters 19-25), the authors focus on the revenue operations team itself. They discuss alternative ways to structure the RevOps function in a company and describe the traits and behaviors that good RevOps leaders and team members exhibit and practice.

My Take

The Revenue Operations Manual will be valuable for anyone involved in revenue operations, and it should be required reading for anyone new to the RevOps field. The book is well organized and well written, and the authors' writing style makes the book easy to read, even though it contains an extensive amount of information.

This book was written by practitioners for practitioners. Sean Lane and Laura Adint cover issues that everyone involved in revenue operations will likely confront at some point in their career, and they provide practical advice based on their combined three-plus decades of experience working in several operations leadership roles.

While Lane and Adint stress that revenue operations is "inherently cross-functional" and should encompass the whole customer journey, The Revenue Operations Manual tends to emphasize issues and topics that relate primarily to sales. For example, the authors specifically discuss and provide advice about territory planning and incentive compensation design.

In contrast, the authors give much less attention to marketing-related issues and topics. For example, they don't provide specific advice on improving the productivity of content operations. If you want your revenue operations function to cover the entire revenue generation process, the RevOps team will need to be as involved in marketing operations as they are in sales operations.

One final thought. Regular readers of this blog may remember that I reviewed Revenue Operations by Stephen G. Diorio and Chris H. Hummel a couple of months ago. Diorio and Hummel's approach to the topic of revenue operations differs significantly from the approach embodied in The Revenue Operations Manual.

Both books are excellent, but I found Revenue Operations to be a challenging book to read. I recommend both books, but I suggest you read The Revenue Operations Manual first.