Analyst one-on-one sessions at Forrester’s B2B Summit EMEA event present the opportunity for delegates to speak with an analyst on a specific topic or particular piece of research. This year’s Summit wrapped up earlier this month, and as always, we had some great conversations. Here are some of the revenue operations hot topics that came up this year.

Why Is Adopting The Right Operating Model The Best Approach To Delivering Revenue Operations?

Revenue leaders increasingly recognize the need to move away from thinking in terms of org charts and job titles when contemplating how to deliver revenue operations for their organizations. Instead, they are adopting an operating model for the revenue ecosystem that avoids leaving them overreliant on restructuring as the primary lever of change. This ensures avoiding a focus that is too narrow to deliver the necessary orchestration of technology, data, process, and measurement. An operating-model-led approach to RevOps enables leaders in revenue operations, sales operations, or marketing operations to design, implement, and evolve the right approach to delivering business and customer value.

Is It Feasible To Pilot Changes To Our Revenue Process Before Full Deployment?

On the face of it, contemplating a pilot of changes to the revenue process sounds like the UK planning a switch to driving on the right by having cars change in the morning and trucks in the afternoon. In fact, it’s more like trialing the new approach for all vehicles on a few streets before rolling it out to the rest of the country. Most large businesses have revenue motions for specific segments, geographies, or products that involve particular teams across marketing, qualification, and sales. Look for a sales leader in such an area who recognizes the efficiency and pipeline uplift benefits of adopting a new approach to the revenue process, then make the changes there. Alternatively, difficulties reaching targets also provide a great motivator for trying something new. Most CRMs can handle the necessary platform changes for specific motions without affecting the rest of the business. Initially working with a smaller group is easier, so carefully capture the results from the pilot to prove the case for a wider adoption. Most likely, the rest of the business will beat a path to your door after they see what’s possible, regardless of which side of the road they’re on!

How Can Revenue Operations Teams Deploy AI To Drive Sales Engagement With Buyers?

Empowering individual sellers to orchestrate their engagement with buyers is key to unlocking peak performance. Equally, providing sellers with insight into B2B purchasers is crucial, particularly visibility over the buying groups that are typically making these complex decisions. Fortunately, a new category of revenue technology recently identified by Forrester is making this much easier for B2B organizations across new business acquisition, growth, and retention. Known as revenue orchestration platforms, these tools harness AI to automate repetitive prospecting tasks, help eliminate manual activity tracking, and centralize buyer signal capture that contributes to buyer group identification. Although the solutions in this space are represented by a wide range of vendors with varying capabilities that require close scrutiny, smart RevOps leaders will embrace this new opportunity to optimize seller performance.

How Do We Get The Most Value From Our Event Data?

The benefits of event data are often overlooked despite the many options available to take advantage of it, as well as the fact that other data sources are fast disappearing. Indeed, we’ve found that half of marketers recognize they are not getting the most from data captured at events. Among other opportunities, event data can be used to improve the event experience itself (before, during, and afterward), buyer understanding, product development, and, of course, pipeline generation. Put simply, the barriers to realizing these benefits are siloed data, technology, and processes. Overcome these issues by ensuring that event technology is integrated with the wider revtech stack so that owned and third-party event data is fully activated. This necessitates frontline and event marketing teams working with revenue operations and avoiding the temptation to “go it alone.” Similarly, RevOps leaders must take on the responsibility to embrace event systems and data for the benefit of the business.

What Is The Best Approach To Building Our Executive Dashboard?

Dashboards are the most visible form of reporting and analytics delivery, widely used throughout the revenue ecosystem and beyond, yet are frequently the result of inadequate planning and design. Among the biggest problems with executive dashboards is that they can only be as good as the underlying measurement strategy they reflect. Revenue operations leaders responsible for insight delivery must determine the measures that reflect actual business performance and not succumb simply to displaying vanity metrics. When establishing dashboard requirements, ensure that the specific audience, their objectives, and the necessary refresh cadence are clear. An executive-level dashboard in particular should not merely be a rollup of metrics across marketing or sales and should focus on impact, not activity. And remember, the hallmark of a great dashboard is one that includes customer value metrics, not just internal-facing ones!

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Strategy, execution, and, of course, AI were recurring themes this year for revenue operations leaders. If you’re a Forrester client, arrange a follow-up discussion to continue the conversations. Otherwise, we’ll see you again next year!