RevOps Trends Going into 2024
In our daily work and interaction with hundreds of companies, we’re seeing some very big trends as we go into 2024. These are things companies across industries are seeing and having to account for as they make their marketing and sales plans for 2024. Here’s what to keep your eye on:
Demand Generation to Pipeline Management Ratios
Companies, particularly those with 10mm - 100mm in revenue, increasingly have too much investment in their pipeline management compared to their demand generation. This is a dire misallocation of time and money. The result is inefficiency and ultimately lower revenue.
Learn more in our white paper describing the trend. When companies come to us and we suspect this issue, there are some pretty simple metrics to pull to determine if this is the root of the issue.
Globalization of Outbound Demand Generation Teams
Many organizations are facing challenges with their outbound demand generation teams, which predominantly consist of U.S. labor. Commonly, the sales development representative/business development representative (SDR/BDR) function is filled by entry-level U.S. talent. These individuals typically spend only 12 to 18 months in their role before seeking promotion to account executive or pipeline management positions.
This trend is imposing a significant economic burden on companies, as they must constantly recruit, train, and manage the high turnover in these roles. Furthermore, to retain top talent, organizations are often illogically promoting demand generation personnel into pipeline management roles. This practice leads to a disproportionate investment in pipeline management compared to the necessary focus on demand generation. (See our first trend, Demand Generation to Pipeline Management Ratios.)
One solution is building outbound demand generation teams utilizing English speaking offshore talent. This is leading to less churn and a much more financially efficient outbound motion in our experience and for our clients.
Maintaining or Increasing Output with Lower Headcount
Many organizations are experiencing a contraction in middle management, which is creating a focus problem for sales and marketing leadership. This squeeze is commonly showing up in two ways.
Capacity Problems
The reality is that many organizations are reducing headcount and finding gaps beginning to emerge in their capacity to deliver work. We have had a substantial influx of demand for our revenue operations support service offering. This service consists of technical support for sale and marketing infrastructure, demand generation support for inbound and outbound programs, as well as training and professional development. Things they used to have the capacity for or would have made a new hire for are being affected by hiring freezes or lowered headcounts, and they either need to cut parts of their program, become more efficient, or put things off.
Increase in Temp to Perm Staffing
Leaders in middle market (sub 100mm) organizations must remain focused on hitting the goals of the current quarter but they lack the recruiting, hiring, training, and ramping infrastructure to help them ensure they have appropriate staffing for their departments. We’ve seen this in all the roles we offer staffing for: SDR/BDR, account executives, account management, customer success, and paid and organic marketing positions.
Technology Changing the Competitive Landscape
Technology is simply changing at a faster rate than it used to. Companies who continually test and incorporate new technologies to become more efficient and effective are already beginning to have a competitive advantage over those who don’t.
A trap many companies are falling into is that leadership doesn’t prioritize testing new tools, or is out of the day-to-day operations and isn’t aware of every new platform or tool that comes out. Individual contributors may be testing and using great tools, but they aren’t being implemented at a larger scale, just on the personal or small team level.
Companies have to combat this purposefully - it won’t happen by accident. At FullFunnel, our leadership team meets biweekly to test new tools and report on our experiences. That’s a major investment – 15 of our top people meet twice a month for an hour, not to mention the time it takes each leader to test the new platforms we find. But the results are well worth it.
Companies unprepared for these trends are going to find themselves in a tough spot while their competitors get ahead. If your organization is dealing with any of these challenges, schedule a free consultation to see how FullFunnel can help.
