Revenue operations (RevOps) vs sales operations (SalesOps) are slightly different approaches for businesses to reflect on internal processes and strategize for the future.

In this article, you will learn what each role entails, their day-to-day activities, and the unique benefits they offer. We’ll explore tools and tips to determine which of these frameworks could best suit your needs.

Key takeaways

• SalesOps enhances sales team productivity; RevOps optimizes all revenue-related processes across your business.
• SalesOps is key for startups and small businesses that want to improve direct sales efforts.
• RevOps suits larger businesses that want to expand into new markets and foster a collaborative company culture.
• Both approaches are rooted in extracting key information with data analytics.
• You can streamline your sales documentation process with PandaDoc, which caters to the needs of SalesOps and RevOps by automating proposals, contracts, and e-signatures.

Revenue operations vs sales operations: what’s the difference?

Revenue operations (RevOps) and sales operations (SalesOps) are both critical components of a company’s operations, but they focus on different aspects of the business and have distinct roles.

Sales operations primarily focus on supporting the sales team and optimizing the sales process.

On the other hand, revenue operations take a more holistic approach, integrating and aligning sales, marketing, and customer success functions to optimize the entire revenue-generating process.

Let’s take a quick overview:

Aspect	Revenue operations (RevOps)	Sales operations (Sales Ops)
Focus	Holistic approach, integrating sales, marketing, and customer success operations to optimize the entire revenue-generating process.	Primarily focused on supporting the sales team and optimizing the sales process.
Scope	Encompasses sales, marketing, customer success, and sometimes finance operations.	Concentrated on the sales function, including tasks such as forecasting, territory management, and performance tracking.
Alignment	Aims to break down silos between departments and improve collaboration across the entire revenue cycle.	Primarily concerned with aligning sales strategies with organizational goals and improving sales efficiency.
Objective	Drive overall revenue growth and improve the customer experience by enhancing collaboration and leveraging data insights.	Increase sales team efficiency, effectiveness, and ultimately, revenue generation.
Key responsibilities	Integrating systems and processes across departments, optimizing the customer journey, and leveraging data analytics for strategic decision-making.	Sales process optimization, sales forecasting, territory management, implementing sales technologies, and performance tracking.

Now let’s explore each of these in more detail.

What is sales operations (SalesOps)?

Sales operations, or SalesOps for short, refers to the processes behind how companies enhance the productivity of their sales teams.

Most businesses have a sales strategy; SalesOps is how you execute it successfully.

J. Patrick Kelly, a pioneer in defining the SalesOps role, famously described SalesOps as dealing with “all the nasty number things you don’t want to do, but need to do to make a great sales force.”

And boy, was he spot on! SalesOps folks are the unsung heroes analyzing performance metrics and working behind the scenes to clear the path for sales teams to do what they do best — sell.

The responsibility for these tasks usually falls to the sales manager or CEO. At least, that’s how it is in startups and small businesses.

However, at the enterprise level, it’s common to have a dedicated SalesOps team whose job is to optimize everything sales-related.

Whether it’s a one-person show or a whole department, sales and operations planning is the heart of SalesOps. It’s all about syncing up what you’re selling with how you’re selling it.

This means making sure your sales goals are aligned with your inventory, manpower, and budget.

What does SalesOps do?

SalesOps has a big job; it makes sure your sales team can do their best work without getting bogged down by logistics or admin. The role generally encompasses the following areas and activities:

Conducting data analytics

A lot of what SalesOps does is look at metrics like conversion rates, sales velocity, and lead response times.

To get there, your data sources must be fully integrated and organized on a central platform.

Managing the sales tech stack

SalesOps professionals manage the sales tech stack, making sure tools like CRM systems are free of any annoying bugs or bottlenecks.

They might integrate a CRM with dialer software, for example, so reps can call leads with a single click — saving them time searching for phone numbers.

Informing sales strategies

Using insights from sales forecasts, SalesOps help develop better sales strategies.

Maybe they notice a dip in win rates when competitors launch a new feature, which would suggest it’s time to pivot and refresh the sales pitch.

Altogether, SalesOps makes the sales cycle as smooth as possible.

By analyzing each step, they can pinpoint where deals tend to stall (like at the contract proposal stage) and streamline these areas, ensuring leads glide from one stage to the next, all the way to a closed sale.

7 benefits of sales operations

Effective sales strategies aren’t just drawn up by accident; they’re carefully curated by SalesOps teams with access to real-time data.

Here are seven key benefits that SalesOps brings to the table:

• Streamlines sales processes: Taking a SalesOps approach means that bottlenecks and time-consuming processes are quickly identified and removed from the sales workflow.
• Improves sales rep productivity: Eliminating admin tasks means your sales reps can focus on engaging with prospects and clients.
• Manage data more effectively: Having your sales data in one place is useful for crafting a business strategy that reflects market conditions.
• Create more customized sales strategies: With data-driven insights, SalesOps helps teams find the perfect pitch for different customer segments.
• Create better sales training materials: Open access to data also means it’s easier to see what the overachievers are doing right, so you can learn from them and teach their techniques to the underperformers/new employees.
• Optimizes the sales pipeline: SalesOps ensures a well-managed and efficient sales pipeline, accelerating the lead-to-deal process and enhancing follow-up strategies.
• Close out more deals: At the end of the day, SalesOps is all about sealing the deal. More efficiency + better strategies = more closed deals.

What is revenue operations (RevOps)?

Revenue Operations, or RevOps for short, is like the bigger picture of SalesOps — and some may even say that it’s the natural evolution of the role.

Unlike SalesOps, which focuses on the nitty-gritty of the sales process, RevOps takes a wider lens and looks at all the factors that generate revenue for a business.

Take, for instance, building a reputable brand image. To achieve that, you need to live up to the expectations set by your marketing team, complement it with an honest sales strategy, and ensure every customer is satisfied with the service.

If your business departments — like sales, marketing, and customer success — all have different goals, then you could easily end up sending mixed messages to your customers.

Imagine that your sales team overpromises on a product’s feature, completing a sale but also losing a customer’s trust. Things may look good on paper, but your business missed a trick here.

Sometimes, you must take a holistic approach to create long-term revenue streams.

This is where RevOps comes in to develop a unified business strategy and make sure everyone sticks to it.

In terms of who does RevOps, it varies.

In smaller companies, these responsibilities might fall to a few key individuals who wear multiple hats.

But in larger organizations, you’re increasingly likely to find a dedicated RevOps team committed to synchronizing operational strategies across departments.

What does RevOps do?

The scope of RevOps encompasses a broad array of responsibilities — all to maximize an organization’s revenue-generating capabilities. Here’s what it involves:

Integrating systems and data

A critical function of RevOps is to prevent data silos from forming between sales, marketing, and customer success departments.

This means integrating all of the tools, platforms, and databases used in a business.

Optimizing the customer journey

RevOps is tasked with identifying and removing any friction points within the customer lifecycle, from initial awareness to purchase and retention.

Driving high-level strategic decisions

With their high-level view, RevOps uses insights from across the organization to inform strategic business decisions.

For instance, they could look at both customer feedback and sales data to recognize an emerging market opportunity and know to push this in the next marketing campaign.

In essence, RevOps makes sure that your company’s revenue goals are achieved, and it does this by ensuring every department works together more efficiently.

7 benefits of revenue operations

The introduction of revenue operations into an organization can bring about a transformative shift in business strategy and identity.

Let’s take a look at the key benefits of a successful implementation:

• Creates a unified company culture: RevOps fosters a culture of collaboration as it sets common goals and practices across every department.
• Provides greater visibility across departments: Management can make strategic decisions without being misinformed by siloed data.
• Delivers better customer experience: All roads lead to the customer with RevOps, which nudges your company to prioritize satisfaction and loyalty.
• Removes operational barriers: It eliminates inefficiencies within the revenue cycle, meaning your team can respond to changes in strategy with agility.
• Improves resource allocation: Think of RevOps as your strategic planner, ensuring every resource is exactly where it needs to be for maximum impact.
• Increases revenue (and growth opportunities): RevOps drives revenue growth across the board—making departments more productive and focused on objectives.
• Backs everything up with data: Decision-making in RevOps is grounded in comprehensive data analysis, which means decisions are made with transparency.

RevOps vs SalesOps: which is best for your business?

Understanding the differences in sales ops vs revenue ops is one thing, but knowing what’s right for your business is an entirely different question.

If you’re struggling to decide which is the best pick for you, keep reading, as we’ll explain the situations where each approach would make the most sense:

When to hire SalesOps instead of RevOps

The sorts of businesses that pick SalesOps over RevOps usually fit the following criteria:

• Sales aren’t hitting the mark, even though you have a strong product
• You’re struggling to understand your audience
• You need a rapid rethink of sales strategy

For these reasons, picking sales operations alone is probably best for startups and small businesses that face the challenge of establishing a strong market presence.

When you delve into the sales data, you get a lot of new ideas to work with about how to sell products to specific market segments and customer needs.

It lets you develop a sales plan that gets you on track during the early stages of market penetration.

When to hire RevOps instead of SalesOps

On the other hand, revenue operations may better fit your objectives if your business fits these criteria:

• Revenue growth has slowed down or completely leveled out
• Departments are failing to communicate with each other
• You’re having trouble with silos and unintegrated data

You usually see a revenue operations strategy adopted by mid-sized companies that want to scale.

It’s for those who’ve got the basics down but need to get every department — from sales to customer success —playing nice together.

It’s a longer-term approach meant to uplift the brand image and ensure sustainable business growth.

When to combine RevOps and SalesOps

Why settle for one when you can have the best of both?

Many businesses use RevOps and SalesOps at the same time, especially if they fit the following criteria:

• Your business is expanding into new (but varied) markets
• Operational efficiency is tough because of your large team
• Targeted sales strategies have helped your business get to this point

These factors usually apply to rapidly growing companies that seek diversification of their market share.

Here, you need both the precision of SalesOps and the holistic oversight of RevOps.

This means you’re better at meeting the needs of different customer segments while keeping every department on the same page.

You can detect problems earlier and be more reflexive to emerging market conditions.

Building a revenue operations framework

Building a revenue operations framework doesn’t have to be complicated.

Here’s a straightforward guide to set your business on the right track:

Harmonize your teams

Firstly, draw up a manifesto for every department in your business to work toward.

You want to promote a culture of openness, where everyone is welcome to share ideas even if they’re not directly related to their domain.

Centralize your data

Implement a data management system that aggregates data across departments, such as a CRM platform.

This will be management’s central hub for tracking team performance and customer satisfaction.

Integrate your tools

Now, set up seamless data flows from each department to reach this central repository.

This could mean integrating your marketing automation tool with your CRM or ensuring that your customer feedback system feeds directly into product development pipelines.

Automate the routine

Adopt tools that automate repetitive tasks.

This could include setting up automated email sequences for lead nurturing or using chatbots for initial customer inquiries, freeing your team to focus on more strategic tasks.

Dive into the analytics

Finally, use analytics tools to extract actionable insights from all the raw data you’ve collected.

Whether for SalesOps to fine-tune sales techniques or for RevOps to streamline wider operational strategies, this data will be the key to business success and growth.

Simplify your sales doc process with PandaDoc sales software

To sum up, there are several approaches that you can take in business operations, but there is no one-size-fits-all answer to making your team more productive.

SalesOps gets your sales team racing, while RevOps ensures the whole company is in the same race.

No matter what approach you decide to take, the job is easier when you use document workflow software like PandaDoc.

From a sales operations perspective, PandaDoc accelerates the sales cycle from initial quoting to deal closure.

You get access to 1000s of proposal templates, a central hub for document storage, and features like automated contract renewals.

It also makes life easier for your customers as our software integrates with payment providers like Paypal, Stripe, and QuickBooks.

From a revenue operations perspective, PandaDoc helps out by centralizing your data in one place.

A core feature of our product is our integrations with leading CRM platforms like Salesforce, HubSpot, and Pipedrive — meaning your data never ends up siloed.

It’s easier for management to take a top-down look at everything with a useful data analytics dashboard.

Why not see how PandaDoc can work for you with a 14-day free trial?

Disclaimer

PandaDoc is not a law firm, or a substitute for an attorney or law firm. This page is not intended to and does not provide legal advice. Should you have legal questions on the validity of e-signatures or digital signatures and the enforceability thereof, please consult with an attorney or law firm. Use of PandaDoc services are governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.