The RevOps Rocket: Getting Started with Revenue Operations (RevOps)

Your sales team is hustling, marketing is generating leads, and your customer success team is managing accounts—but something feels off. Leads are slipping through the cracks, team communication is disjointed, and forecasting revenue is more guesswork than strategy.

Sound familiar? That’s where Revenue Operations (RevOps) comes in.

While it may feel like it, RevOps isn’t just for enterprise giants with complex systems and big budgets. In reality, small and medium businesses (SMBs) stand to gain the most value from starting early. By building a strong foundation now, you’ll avoid the chaos that can come with scaling later. Whether you’re a Sales Leader just putting the building blocks in place, or a RevOps leader brought in to establish process and efficiency, let’s explore how you can get RevOps started from scratch and achieve early wins.

What is RevOps, and Why Should SMBs Care?

If you’re brand new to the concept, RevOps aligns your sales, marketing, and customer success teams to create a streamlined, efficient revenue engine. RevOps is the operating system for your Go-To-Market (GTM) function. For SMBs, this alignment can make or break your ability to grow sustainably.

Here’s why RevOps is crucial for smaller organizations:

• Maximize Resources: SMBs often operate with lean teams and tight budgets. RevOps ensures every dollar and every team member is driving measurable results.
• Eliminate Inefficiencies: With fewer people, you can’t afford wasted effort. RevOps identifies bottlenecks and improves handoffs between teams.
• Prepare for Growth: The most important early win in my opinion, setting up RevOps early creates a scalable infrastructure that will support you as your business grows.

How to Start RevOps from Scratch

Getting started with RevOps doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your business. Follow these simple steps to build momentum and see results quickly:

Start with Data

• Audit your current process: Where are leads dropping off? Where are teams duplicating efforts?
• Focus on the basics: Ensure clean, reliable data in your CRM. For SMBs, messy data is often the biggest barrier to effective RevOps.

Align Teams Around Shared Goals

• Get sales, marketing, and customer success in a room and agree on key metrics. These could include:
  • Marketing: Lead quality (vs. quantity) and conversion rates.
  • Sales: Pipeline velocity and win rates.
  • Customer Success: Retention rates and expansion opportunities.
• Created a shared revenue goal that every team contributes to, like hitting $1M in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

Focus on Small Wins

• Instead of trying to revolutionize your operations overnight, aim for quick wins that deliver immediate impact:
  • Lead Prioritization: Use basic scoring models to help your sales team focus on high-potential leads first.
  • Simplify Handoffs: Create clear, documented processes for passing leads between marketing, sales, and customer success.
  • Automate Repetitive Tasks: Start with simple automations (like lead routing and account scoring) or follow-up reminders in your CRM.

Adding Revenue Planning to Your RevOps Foundation

Implementing Revenue Operations starts with Revenue Planning, and creating a loop of planning, execution, and evaluation is what sets every size team up for success. It’s not just about setting ambitious targets, it’s about building a realistic, data-driven roadmap to achieve them. Here’s a quick guide on how to incorporate revenue planning into your RevOps efforts from day one:

Define Your Revenue Goals

• How will that target break down by new customers, existing customer expansion, and retention?
• Are these goals aligned with our current resources (team size, budget, tools)?
• Set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) to ensure your revenue targets are realistic and actionable.

Understand Your Capacity

Revenue growth isn’t just about selling more—it’s about ensuring you have the capacity to deliver. Review your team’s workload and identify potential bottlenecks:

• Sales: Do we have enough reps to handle lead volume?
• Customer Success: Can we support and retain our growing customer base?
• Marketing: Are we generating enough high-quality leads to fill the pipeline?

If capacity is a concern, consider prioritizing high-value accounts or automating manual tasks to free up time.

Break Down the Funnel

Work backward from your revenue goal to identify the key metrics and milestones at each stage of your funnel:

• How many leads do we need to generate?
• What’s our conversion rate from lead to opportunity?
• How long is our sales cycle?

This breakdown ensures you’re focused on the right activities at the right time.

Revisit and Adjust Regularly

Revenue planning isn’t a one-and-done activity. Schedule regular check-ins (monthly or quarterly) to review performance, adjust forecasts, and refine your strategy. SMBs operate in dynamic environments, and staying agile is your biggest advantage.

Case Study: The SMB Approach to RevOps

Take ACME Corp, a 20-person SaaS startup with 5 Account Executives and a small but growing Customer Success organization. They struggled with inconsistent follow-ups and missed renewal opportunities. By implementing a lightweight RevOps strategy, they:

The result? A 15% increase in close rates and a 20% improvement in retention within six months—all without hiring additional staff.

The First 90 Days: Focus Areas for Early Success

To keep your RevOps strategy simple and focused, prioritize these areas in your first 90 days:

Data Hygiene: Dedicate time to cleaning your CRM. Remove duplicates, update incomplete records, and enforce consistency.
Team Alignment: Schedule regular check-ins between sales, marketing, and customer success to keep everyone on the same page.
Metrics That Matter: Start small by tracking one or two metrics, like lead conversion rate or customer churn, and build from there.
Invest in Lightweight Tools: You don’t need enterprise-grade software. Affordable, user-friendly tools like HubSpot or Pipedrive can get you started.

RevOps for SMBs: It’s All About Simplicity

For small and medium-sized businesses, RevOps doesn’t have to be overwhelming. The key is to start small, focus on immediate pain points, and build a foundation for future growth.

By prioritizing clean data, team alignment, small process improvements, and a clear revenue planning process, you’ll see quick wins that make a real impact on your bottom line. And as your business grows, your RevOps strategy will scale with you, ensuring sustainable, predictable revenue growth.