Time is Money
We’ve all heard “time is money” before, but for RevOps that is the cold hard truth.
Our number one job isn’t to be tech wizards or analytics gurus… it’s to be a protector of time. The best operations teams protect their sales team’s time like it’s revenue. Because it is.
The best reps spend 22% more time with customers, as verified by McKinsey.
The best reps have a daily plan when they walk in the door. They have weekly rituals and cadences that usher them toward success across all facets of the game: prospecting, managing pipeline and closing deals.
As Revenue Operations leaders we should constantly be asking:
“What's the biggest thing stealing time in our org and what are the best solutions?”
Time is the most precious resource for any sales organization, and especially for the revenue-generating teams. Lost time translates directly into lost opportunities, lost deals, and ultimately, lost revenue. A RevOps team that understands this principle shifts from being a support function to a strategic driver of growth. They become the guardians of efficiency, ensuring every minute is maximized for selling.
10 Ways RevOps Can Protect Their Team's Time
Automate Repetitive Tasks: Identify and automate routine tasks like data entry, lead routing, report generation, and follow-up email sequences. Use CRM features, workflow automation tools, and potentially even robotic process automation (RPA) for the most repetitive, rules-based processes.
Streamline Processes: Regularly review sales, marketing, and customer success processes (lead management, deal qualification, onboarding, etc.) to identify bottlenecks, redundancies, and unnecessary steps. Simplify and document these processes clearly.
Centralize Information and Resources: Create a single source of truth for sales collateral, product information, pricing, contracts, and training materials. This prevents reps from wasting time searching for information across multiple platforms or asking colleagues repeatedly. Think: a well-organized internal knowledge base.
Implement and Optimize CRM Usage: Ensure the CRM is properly configured, customized to the sales process, and that the team is fully trained on how to use it effectively. Enforce data hygiene standards to maintain data quality and prevent time wasted on cleaning up bad data.
Proactive Communication & Meeting Management: Establish clear communication protocols. Encourage asynchronous communication (e.g., Slack, email) for non-urgent matters. Promote efficient meeting practices, including clear agendas, defined outcomes, and minimizing unnecessary attendees. Consider "no-meeting" days or blocks.
Develop Clear Rules of Engagement (ROEs): Define clear handoffs and responsibilities between different teams (e.g., marketing and sales, sales and customer success). This reduces confusion, prevents duplication of effort, and minimizes internal friction.
Invest in Training and Enablement: Provide ongoing training on sales methodologies, product knowledge, and tools. Well-trained reps are more efficient and confident, requiring less ad-hoc support.
Implement Smart Scheduling: Use scheduling tools (like Calendly, Chili Piper, or similar) to eliminate the back-and-forth of scheduling meetings with prospects and customers is smart — you can deliver this with Office and Google Calendar as well. This saves considerable time and reduces administrative overhead.
Regularly Audit and Refine Tech Stack: Evaluate the effectiveness of existing sales and marketing technology tools. Eliminate redundant or underutilized tools, and explore new technologies that can further automate or optimize processes. Ensure seamless integration between tools to avoid data silos and manual data transfers.
Prioritize and Triage Requests: Develop a system for prioritizing requests from the sales team. Not everything is equally urgent or impactful. Use a ticketing system or project management tool to manage requests and ensure that RevOps focuses on the tasks that will have the greatest impact on revenue generation. A clear intake process is crucial.
But let's be honest, are you really doing everything you can?
Let's get tactical.
You probably need to do a better job...
1. ...Tracking Meeting Counts (and Quality!) Instead of Just Pipeline Volume:
The Problem: You're likely obsessed with pipeline volume, but are you tracking how that pipeline is being built and moved? Are reps having enough meetings? Are they the right meetings? Too many internal meetings? Too few with qualified prospects?
The Tactics:
Implement Meeting Tracking in your CRM: Don't just log calls; log all meetings (internal, external, discovery, demo, etc.) with clear categorization.
Set Meeting Benchmarks: Based on your sales cycle and conversion rates, determine the ideal number and type of meetings per rep, per week/month.
Analyze Meeting-to-Opportunity Conversion: Track how different meeting types correlate with opportunity creation and deal progression. This reveals which meetings are actually valuable.
Review Meeting Notes (Selectively): Don't micromanage, but spot-check meeting notes to assess quality and ensure reps are following the sales process.
Internal vs External Meeting Ratio: Track and be sure the team isn't spending too much time in meetings with each other.
2. ...Supporting Your Team with Real Automations and Sales Support Functions (Not Just Lip Service):
The Problem: You say you support your team, but are you truly removing obstacles and automating the tedious stuff? Or are you just throwing more tools at them?
The Tactics:
Identify the Top 3 Time-Wasters: Survey your sales team. Ask them directly: "What are the biggest time-sucks in your day?" Don't guess.
Automate Those Things: Prioritize automation efforts based on the survey results. This might include:
Automated Lead Routing and Assignment: No more manual lead distribution.
Email Sequences and Templates: Pre-built, personalized email sequences for different stages of the sales cycle.
Automated Data Enrichment: Enrich leads with data from third-party sources automatically.
Proposal Generation: Streamline the creation of proposals and quotes.
Dedicated Sales Support: Consider a dedicated Sales Support or Sales Enablement role (or team, depending on size) to handle:
Content Creation and Management: Keeping sales collateral up-to-date.
Training Coordination: Scheduling and organizing training sessions.
Ad-hoc Requests: Fielding one-off requests from reps.
Creating Documentation and Best Practice
3. ...Minimizing Busywork (Ruthlessly!):
The Problem: "Busywork" is the silent killer of sales productivity. It's the death by a thousand papercuts.
The Tactics:
The "5 Whys" Audit: For every report, every process, every meeting, ask "Why?" five times. Get to the root cause of why it exists. If you can't justify it, eliminate it.
Challenge the Status Quo: Just because something has "always been done" doesn't mean it's still necessary.
CRM Clean-Up: Regularly audit and clean your CRM data. Bad data leads to wasted time.
Streamline Reporting: Focus on the key metrics that drive revenue. Eliminate unnecessary reports.
Batch Similar Tasks: Encourage reps to block time for similar tasks (e.g., prospecting, data entry, follow-ups) to minimize context switching.
Simplify Admin Processes: If it takes more than a few minutes for an expense, or an internal form to be complete, it is likely broken.
The bottom line: Stop talking about protecting your team's time and start doing it. Be relentless. Be specific. Be the champion of efficiency your sales team needs. Your revenue will thank you.
Revenue is a time game. More time with customers = more deals. Prioritize it accordingly.
By focusing on these areas RevOps can transform from a reactive support function to a proactive force that drives efficiency and enables the sales team to focus on what they do best: building relationships and closing deals.
The ultimate goal is to create a frictionless environment where revenue-generating activities are prioritized and time-wasting activities are minimized.
A low-friction revenue engine drives a powerful, reliable and efficient go-to-market.
👋 Thank you for reading Mastering Revenue Operations.
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I started this in November 2023 because revenue technology and revenue operations methodologies started evolving so rapidly I needed a focal point to coalesce ideas, outline revenue system blueprints, discuss go-to-market strategy amplified by operational alignment and logistical support, and all topics related to revenue operations.
Mastering Revenue Operations is a central hub for the intersection of strategy, technology and revenue operations. Our audience includes Fortune 500 Executives, RevOps Leaders, Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs.