The single biggest thing that Revops can do is pull the entire supply chain together while gathering data. This means ensuring that information coming out of marketing is aligned with, and not conflicting with, the data coming out of sales. Often, RevOps needs to sit in on meetings and bridge those gaps.
RevOps is responsible for:
RevOps is uniquely positioned to bring a sense of rationality to planning. They're the ones who ask difficult questions like: "If we've never had a 40% win rate, why do you think we'll hit it this year?" Then, they develop key initiatives and create a plan. Without this work, your goal to increase your win rate is wrong from day one.
Jump to clip to hear why RevOps is the perfect interdepartmental mediator.
Shriya discusses the importance of looping in go-to-market leaders from the get-go. The very first meeting should be about guiding principles. What are the overarching philosophies going into this planning process? Are we all aligned on these philosophies? This allows you to apply structure to tackling topics like segmentation going forward.
Aim for weekly or bi-weekly meetings dedicated to planning where leaders can collaborate on strategy. When collaboration starts early, folks understand what exactly they’re committing to and have the opportunity to chime in, share objections, and discuss options. RevOps can facilitate all of this.
"The worst thing you can do is go off into your cave, build a plan, and then present a 90% baked plan to your leaders." -Shriya Ravikumar
Jump to clip to learn why RevOps needs to socialize with GTM leaders and bring them along for the ride.
Scenario planning isn’t just about having a Plan B, it's about understanding the range of possible outcomes and preparing accordingly. Any plan is just one of many paths to get to a target. There are many permutations and not every KPI needs to be optimized. Sometimes it’s alright to stay at your baseline as long as you can model it out.
Leave yourself enough time to determine the combinations of risk, investment, and likelihood of success for different plans. In fact, create an aggressive plan, a conservative plan, and a few plans in between. Scenario planning allows you to adjust for uncertainties, be it market conditions or internal changes. It helps set realistic expectations at different levels—board, company, and go-to-market teams.
Jump to clip for common scenario data points to look out for in sales and marketing.
There’s a real risk when getting your revenue estimates wrong. Overestimating revenue can lead to over-hiring, missed targets, low morale… and eventually layoffs. Underestimating can be equally dangerous because you might not have the resources to hit the productivity levels needed to reach your goals.
Avoid big missteps by investing in understanding your assumptions for your plan early on in the planning process. Be clear on where you’re getting your data from, the bets you’re making, and whether you’re working collaboratively with different minds to pressure test your assumptions. If your assumptions are really off, you might as well not use your plan at all. It won’t be based in reality and you’ll spend all year catching up and firefighting.
“This is the classic Goldilocks problem. Not too hot, not too cold, just right. It's tough. This is where scenario planning is helpful to understand the buffers that you want to have in your plan.” - Shriya Ravikumar
Jump to clip to hear how most company’s revenue plans have major flaws.
Shriya and Jeff went through the revenue planning process multiple times when they led RevOps at Intercom. It was a very collaborative effort where they fleshed out strategies around insights, tactics, and what was a reasonable goal versus a stretch goal. Next, they put numbers against these plans to understand leading indicators and lagging indicators about the potential success of each initiative.
The planning session was broken down into multiple offsites:
"We left that meeting all bought in, all aligned, and all accountable," - Jeff Serlin
Jump to clip for a deep dive into the Intercome revenue planning case study.
Always assign ownership for each of your initiatives and build accountability into your meeting schedules. You can set KPIs for each team or you can call them OKRs. You’ll also want to stack rank the impact of each of these initiatives. This builds in a tolerance for missing some goals if they were “long shot” targets versus goals that are fundamental to your business.
Use your offsites to create pebbles that you’re going to invest in and assign owners. Not just the RevOps team or the Head of Sales, but frontline managers as well. Make sure that you’re constantly tracking your KPIs or OKRs over a series of meetings that serve as checkpoints at a very tactical level. This holds the whole organization accountable for success.
Jump to clip for advice on using the concept of pebbles to move initiatives forward.
Wondering what KPIs are most important when revenue planning? Here’s your list of core revenue KPIs to help you keep your team on track and accountable so you can deliver organizational success in 2025:
"By definition, we're supposed to look across the whole go-to-market function and make sure we're optimizing the whole, not just individual parts." Jeff Serlin
At the end of the day, successful revenue planning is about marrying data-driven insights with cross-functional collaboration, all while staying grounded in reality. Next time you're diving into planning season, remember to get everyone involved early, base your assumptions on solid data, plan for multiple scenarios, and keep tabs on your KPIs through regular meetings.
5-chapter guide covering “how to” best practices on risk-proofing your plan, modeling ramps and pipeline capacity, and more.
Determine the right planned quota attainment, over-assignment, and number of sales reps for your organization.
Helpful templates when evaluating key initiatives, actions to accomplish each initiative, and building out a roadmap.
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