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Writing today as an actual human and not a cartoon dinosaur. (Hi 👋 )
So I've spent over a decade in various content roles across Media, SaaS, Ecom, and Cybersec. During all thistime, in my relatively "neutral" position on the revenue team, I've heard some pretty... uh... rough exchanges between RevOps and sales leaders.
Common jabs include RevOps is the “Sales Prevention Department” and sellers are “just plain lazy.”
Interestingly enough, the blame is rarely on the selling environment, the software, the team culture, the economy, whatever. It seems people are naturally inclined to first point fingers at other people, especially when they're different (even if the difference is literally just a job title).
Tribalism aside... now, as a employee of a RevOps-focused company, I'm going to ignore the reps today and address the RevOps community. I've been here at Rattle for a full year (today, in fact) and I've befriended many of our customers and prospects.
Please think of this as tough love.
So, here are the hard truths I think y'all need to hear:
- Your sales team isn’t lazy.
- Unrealistic expectations are the realproblem.
- Until you square these expecations with reality, you’ll always be playing a bit role on the revenue team. (That is, if you think somebody is too lazy to follow your process and that you HAVE to manually reinforce it by spending your time hounding people, you’ll be stuck manually reinforcing your process by dint of your own defeatist attitude.)
What I really mean here is… RevOps' common assumption that their process isn’t followed because sellers are lazy is in itself lazy. You have to keep smacking those hands, right? You just have to keep hassling them for data? There's no other alternative right?
Well, I have good news. Sorta.
It's wrong. It's you.
If you're open to challenging these beliefs, I have actual good news: many, many, MANY data-driven studies suggest the need to approach this as a structural problem, not an issue of human nature (which, as a parent, I can tell you... is much harder to solve for).
So, if you're up for challenging your beliefs for a minute for the improvement of your team and your own future slash mental health... let’s start with a point you might be intimately familiar with, largely because your reps are largely complaining about it all the time…
The modern sales landscape really, really sucks (a lot)
We all know by now that the sales world today is a dumpster fire on top of a barge fire that's moving slowly through an oil slick that’s also on fire in the middle of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
But just how bad is that?
Let's look at the data (I won't overload you with data but twice).
- It takes 8 touches just to book a meeting.
- Buying interactions have nearly doubled to 27.
- Deals on average involve 6.8 stakeholders.
- They take place across an average of 10 channels.
- Selling also requires a great deal of soft skills these days.
- A single SDR manages about 500 accounts annually.
- Sales teams juggle an average of five seller-specific tools, excluding common apps.
- And still, 66% of their day is spent on non-selling activities.
Paints a pretty bleak picture, right?
If that doesn't raise your hackles... how about now combine them with these results of the same environs?
- More than half of sellers don’t hit quota.
- HBR showed that 60 to 90% of processes fail to be properly executed.
- Top-down processes, especially those created without input from frontline salespeople, fail more often. (Thankfully this insightful piece by McKinsey shows that iterative process design, with quick and regular feedback loops from sales teams can lead to better alignment - and less failing).
Gartner also found that 89% of sales leaders think selling has become more intricate in recent years, and 90% of sellers feel burnt out. External factors, from changing customer preferences to A.I.'s rise, have reshaped sales strategies.
So, a static, one-size-fits-all manual from RevOps is outdated.
While you, RevOps, value consistency, the processes you’re building often can't keep up with this insane sales environment. To put it another way: it's not that sales teams are lazy or resistant to processes; it's that RevOps often provides tools and creates processes misaligned with the sales nightmare we all live in daily, particularly in digital environments.
I mean…
Imagine, with all these complexities, being handed a static, one-size-fits-all process manual in a Google Doc… How much faith would you have in that?
Alright, what’s the solution here?
At the root of all this is the major disconnect between those who design and implement the tools and processes and the people who actually use them.
Let's think about that.
There are people who are trying their best to navigate complex corporate mega-structures across multiple platforms in a increasingly noisy maelstrom of A.I. generated garbage... and there are people who charged with making human-designed processes that enable them to meet those challenges.
Expecting your sales team to manage all of the above and then tediously update Salesforce without instruction or clear benefits, does that feel as realistic to you?
Your challenge, RevOps, is that you need to be at the forefront of adapting to the hectic, harried, hassling nature of sales instead of pawning the responsibility off on sellers (and then reluctantly spending all that time manually enforcing it).
In truth, this clunky and manual operational side of selling is what is burning sellers out to begin with (and as I alluded to in the beginning of this post — what is keeping you from bigger, more strategic initiatives).
Now obviously, with Rattle you can visualize and automate all of this so you meet the needs of your team, get the kind of execution you want, and stop wasting time running them down for every little thing.
But even if you're not here for that idea, it's still important to realize all of the tasks seller have to remember demands time and focus, and if you’re not giving that to your reps — in fact, if you’re preventing it — you could very well be part of the problem.
RevOps, it's time to take the leadership mantle and to stop blaming reps. It’s time to both acknowledge the tightrope your sellers tiptoe across daily AND do something about it. For them. For you.
Make your process easier for them. Give them step-by-step signals so they don't have to keep memorizing everything on top of this world.
Sales roles aren't just about facilitating transactions.
Today, they require insight, adaptability, and a terrific grasp of how humans operate.
And for better or worse, RevOps... it's high time to realize... those qualities? Yeah, they're really a huge part of your job, too.
