The corporate world changes fast, and the way companies build customer relationships changes with it. In this context, customer success becomes a core practice: helping customers achieve the outcomes they want when using your product or service, with support throughout the entire journey.
In this post, we will discuss how centralization of operations and process optimization are intrinsically linked to the success of its customers.
What you will see in today’s content
- The concept of customer success and the importance of follow-up throughout the journey.
- How alignment between marketing and sales affects portfolio quality and retention.
- The impact of misalignment between RevOps and customer success on handoff and onboarding.
- How to promote alignment between marketing, sales, and customer success, with leadership and measurement.
- The role of an operating agreement with ICP, funnel passing criteria, and risk or opportunity signals.
- How RevOps centralizes processes, data, and rituals to reduce rework and improve the experience.
- RevOps practices: strategic planning, lead qualification, performance monitoring, and integrated sales tools.
- A checklist to measure whether integration is working, from first touch to post-sale.
Good reading!
How does marketing and sales alignment impact customer success?
Much is said about the importance of alignment between marketing and sales teams, but, after all, what are the benefits of having these two departments working in total synergy and how does this impact customer success?
The truth is that both teams already have a common objective, therefore, investing in courses and training so that everyone can work together, in order to achieve this objective, is a good strategy, especially to encourage teamwork between these teams. departments.
But even so, the focus always ends up being directed towards just this perspective, that of aligning the marketing and sales departments. And how is the customer success department?
When Revenue operations (RevOps) and CS operations work in silos, marketing and sales may still generate volume, but deal quality tends to drop. This often shows up as misaligned expectations, harder onboarding, and lower retention. That’s why it helps to make ICP, qualification criteria, and a clear handoff to the CS team explicit.
This leads to too much effort in making sales that has little impact on your results and your company's revenue generation. Because trying to promote sales to customers who do not fit with your proposal is a practice that can prove to be more expensive than it appears, and its impact can be felt in the time and resources invested in these low-quality sales.
We've all heard the old saying “the customer always comes first”, but if your company is not willing to make investments and, perhaps, commit part of its revenue in the short term, in order to have greater returns with more qualified customers in the long term deadline, then your Customer Success team is only acting in a palliative manner. And this is not the fault of any specific department, but of everyone!
Remember that your customers' success is your success too, and the closer your customer is to your brand or company, the more fruits you can reap from this relationship. Something that goes in line with what we mentioned previously, in which a customer simply closes a sale and you never have any contact with them again.
Don't just make sales, make new regular customers who can count on your products and services. This is the key to sustainable and consistent growth for your business.
SEE TOO:
- What is Revenue Operations (RevOps) and how does it work
- Discover the 8 stages of the sales process and how to carry them out
- RevOps, Sales Ops, CS Ops, DevOps: understand the differences
How to promote alignment between the three departments?
Firstly, for the alignment between departments to be the best possible, it is essential to define who will be leading the teams and how results will be measured from that point forward.
Ideally, the leaders of all departments involved, such as sales, marketing and customer success, always report to the same person in charge.
To make alignment real, it helps to formalize an operating agreement across teams: define the ICP, funnel handoff criteria, which signals indicate risk or opportunity, and what actions are expected at each stage. This reduces internal friction and supports a more consistent customer experience, which customers tend to notice when the company truly operates as one.
The person responsible in question can be a COO, CRO or any other director in the company, but for your choice to be more assertive regarding the decision of this person responsible for the entire operation to align the teams, it is extremely important that he is responsible for the company's revenue. company and that has a perspective that truly recognizes the benefits of Customer Success.
Once you can count on a single person responsible for the three teams and who has these characteristics, creating strategies that unify the efforts of the marketing, sales and customer success teams will become possible.
It is also important to highlight that leadership will have to keep an eye on the data that the customer success team presents regarding customers that are already part of their portfolio, as this will highlight the most problematic customers or those that are already causing some damage to their company, in addition to determining where to focus on the best sales or customer qualification strategies.
Revenue Ops and Customer Success
One of the most reliable ways to centralize operations and processes is to structure revenue operations (RevOps) as a function. In practice, this means aligning marketing, sales, and customer success with shared processes, data, and operating rhythms, reducing rework and improving the experience across the revenue lifecycle.
In this way, the feasibility of strategies that require faster responses and that, consequently, impact the results collected by the customer success team in a positive way, which will result in more efficient processes and enable much more reliable solutions for your company and your customers.
Below, we will describe some of the main RevOps practices that can promote a much more dynamic alignment between the three departments and also enhance your results and your company's revenue generation.
Strategic planning
The first step of RevOps is to promote the integration and complete alignment of all teams, in this case, marketing, sales and customer success, defining metrics and based on their KPIs to guide all planning from that point on.
Based on this information and using strategies that truly integrate all teams, it will be easier to identify possible bottlenecks in your operations and correct them before they cause any more serious damage to your performance or results.
Lead qualification
Qualifying your leads is essential so that the integration between the three departments is the best possible.
Especially in the case of companies with a more extensive contact base, qualifying leads in detail is essential to speed up their passage through your sales funnel and enable the purchasing decision to be accelerated.
In these cases, implement the use of qualification software. This will be your best option when it comes to processing all this information and converting it into much more reliable data that provides your teams with everything they need to increase productivity.
Performance Monitoring
Analyzing metrics and your sales KPIs is essential so that your planning can be applied efficiently and cohesively.
Making use of data analysis based on solid indicators is the key so that everyone, whether departments or managers, can see which points need to be improved, in addition to highlighting what is working in their strategy.
Integrated sales tools
One of the main tools that will enable complete integration between the three departments is the implementation of a CRM platform, which allows the centralization of all your company's processes within a single space.
Another important point is the support of the devOps team to find and develop intelligent solutions to enable your leads’ journey through your sales funnel to be as dynamic as possible, resulting in time and productivity gains for all teams.
Summary: Alignment between the marketing, sales and customer success teams is not just limited to generating revenue, as it has to do with qualifying customers and deploying resources for the right strategies, with the aim of promoting much more sustainable growth. and consistency of your company.
If you want a simple checklist to see whether integration is working, look for: accurate customer expectations at the start, complete information during onboarding, shared metrics across teams, and decisions based on data from the full lifecycle. The goal of revenue operations (RevOps) is to enable that single view, from first touch to post-sale, with fewer silos and more predictability.
Knowing the importance of alignment between these three departments, also take the opportunity to discover how to optimize your relationship strategies with your customers.
Frequently asked questions about alignment between marketing, sales, customer success, and RevOps
What is customer success?
Customer success is helping the customer achieve the results they seek when using your product or service, with follow-up throughout the entire journey.
Why does aligning marketing and sales impact customer success?
Aligning marketing and sales impacts customer success because it influences the quality of what enters the portfolio, the expectations created, and the ease of onboarding, affecting retention.
What happens when RevOps and customer success work disconnected?
When RevOps and customer success work disconnected, marketing and sales may generate volume, but quality tends to drop, with misaligned expectations, more difficult onboarding, and lower retention.
What needs to be clear to improve the handoff to customer success?
ICP, qualification criteria, and a defined handoff to the customer success team need to be clear.
How can alignment between marketing, sales, and customer success be promoted?
Promote alignment by defining who leads the teams, how results will be measured, and formalizing an operating agreement with ICP, funnel passing criteria, risk or opportunity signals, and expected actions at each stage.
What is leadership’s role in integrating the areas?
Leadership should centralize reporting of the three teams to the same owner, with a revenue focus and a view that recognizes the benefits of customer success, and monitor CS data to guide qualification and strategy.
What is RevOps and how does it contribute to the customer experience?
RevOps is a way to centralize operations and processes by aligning marketing, sales, and customer success with unified processes, data, and management rituals, reducing rework and improving the experience across the revenue cycle.
Which RevOps practices help integrate the teams?
Practices include strategic planning based on metrics and KPIs, lead qualification supported by software, performance monitoring, and integrated sales tools such as a CRM platform, with devOps support for solutions that make the journey more dynamic.
How can you measure whether integration between areas is working?
Measure it by checking whether the customer enters with correct expectations, whether onboarding happens with complete information, whether there are shared metrics across areas, and whether decisions use data from the entire cycle, from first touch to post-sale.
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