This is the first post in a series about the most strategic business partner a Sales leader can have- their RevOps teammates

My first experience working with a RevOps team was very task-oriented and reactionary. I was running an inbound-lead-fueled transactional sales team delivering deals all coming from one lead source. In my mind, the value of RevOps was in generating reports to validate our numbers and get everyone paid. Looking back, I missed so much of the full picture.

Upon joining Wix, I found myself in a vastly different environment. Marketing’s lead acquisition team was a juggernaut; inbound leads were coming from paid campaigns, organic website traffic, and partner referrals- just to name a few. We knew which sources were our best but couldn’t articulate “why” one inbound source would convert better than another past a gut instinct. I felt in over my head; we needed data I had no idea how to generate… enter RevOps.

At the urging of leadership, I sat with my RevOps partner to dig deep- we needed to provide actionable feedback to marketing so they could become more precise with their acquisition spend. This was a different exercise than I had ever done with RevOps before- we parsed what appeared to be 4 inbound lead sources into >10 segments by incorporating additional behavioral data points.

We filtered for behavior like:

• Does this lead have a matching free account with us already?
• How long ago was that account created? And when was their last login?
• Have they ever paid for or published a site on Wix?
• Does anyone else with a matching business domain have a free/paid account with us?

The product usage data we incorporated gave us these behavioral inputs.

We found that behavior was a far better indicator for conversion than lead source. It changed the conversation with marketing from “we need more of source X” to “let's look for behavior Y and target those people”. When we changed our reporting in Salesforce to reflect our new segments, it told a very clear story of where to focus acquisition efforts.

What we really did here is create new definitions for lead segments. When you’re trying to create a predictable business model (aren’t we all?) accurate definitions are one of the most important things to pay attention to and revisit frequently. If we’re not properly defining our lead segments, or what it means when an opportunity is at a particular stage in the funnel, we aren’t measuring what is actually going on in the business. And, how can we optimize and improve our business if we’re not measuring the right inputs?

Maintaining accurate definitions takes frequent examination and reflecting those new definitions in your CRM processes; anything short of that would be failing to complete the exercise.

To return to where I began- I was missing so much of the picture thinking of RevOps only as report generators. Having a strategic business partner who helped surface important data insights and made sure we were measuring the right things was invaluable during my time at Wix and it helped me mature as a sales leader. I’ll share more stories in this series of what it means when RevOps can be a strategic partner and not just a task manager so keep your eyes peeled.