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.”
