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It’s unfortunately a common perception by some that marketers sit in their ivory towers and produce comms without the reality of the frontline. At the same time, the sales team is working day in/day out on the frontline speaking with prospects without any real idea of what content is being produced by marketing. When marketing and sales sit in their separate silos, it can cause problems for both teams. Revenue Teams help align marketing and sales for a more effective approach.
In this article, we’re going to be covering:
What is a Revenue Team?
A Revenue Team is a combination of your sales and marketing teams and is made up of key players from both sales and marketing. All activities, regardless of individual roles, are focused on the shared goal of increasing company revenue.
The main purpose of the Revenue Team is exactly what you might suspect – to increase company revenue. But how exactly does the Revenue Team go about doing this?
Why is a Revenue Team necessary?
To understand this, we need to talk about the Changing Buyer and its role in the sales process.
The Changing Buyer and its impact on sales
We’ve already written an article about this, so if you want to check out a more in depth explanation on the changing buyer, you can read that here.
As the internet has become the predominant point of research for buyers, the customer journey has shifted.
Today, on average, 80% of the buying decision is already made BEFORE the first sales call.
– Marcus Sheridan, Author of They Ask, You Answer
If 80% of the buying decision happens before sales even gets a chance to have an impact on the decision, then there must be another department which has an even GREATER impact on the buying decision than sales. That department happens to be marketing.
Through the production of helpful content that answers buyer question in the research phase of the buying decision, marketing helps guide buyers to a decision, and prepares the buyer for the sales process.
Why is this important when it comes to Revenue Teams?
In order to increase revenue, the Revenue Team must align marketing and sales in such a way to support the evolution of the buyer. Said another way, sales needs to be involved in the creation of the content and marketing needs to work with sales to understand the questions/fears/concerns that come up across that buyer’s journey.
So how does a Revenue Team operationally work? Well in summary:
- The Revenue Team meets weekly or fortnightly to discuss the questions that buyers are asking in the sales cycle. This process is a part of a framework known as They Ask, You Answer, which helps businesses increase traffic, leads, and sales.
- Marketing produces content that customers are already asking sales reps in sales calls.
- Sales team members use marketing content in the sales process by assigning “homework” to the prospect in the form of educational blog articles or videos anytime during the sales cycle. This process, known as Assignment Selling, is also a big part of They Ask, You Answer.
In our experience, creating a formal Revenue Team is the best way to align these two important but often working in silo departments.
Other than supporting the goal of increasing revenue, the Revenue Team also has other benefits.
Benefits of a Revenue Team
Research has found that when marketing and sales are aligned, there are exceptional benefits, including higher sales close rates, increased revenue, and increased retention rates.
You might be thinking “If a Revenue Team combines marketing and sales to focus on revenue generation, then does that not distract them from their sales and marketing duties?”
Here’s the thing – in a revenue team, marketers and salespeople both work towards the same goal of trying to generate more revenue, however, each department still continues to work on their designated tasks.
For example, the marketer may be responsible for the development, implementation and oversight of content strategy, as well as the management of your content team or resource. That won’t change when the marketing team joins the Revenue Team. Instead, what happens is that the marketer now approaches their role with the conversations and mindset that come from being a part of The Revenue Team.
In other words, rather than producing content for the sake of producing content, the marketing team is now producing content with purpose – to generate revenue.
When every piece of content is produced with the goal of generating revenue and with the influence of sales on its ideation and production, everything changes, hence the number of benefits that arrive from having a Revenue Team.
Some of those benefits include:
- Attracts higher quality leads
- Saves your sales rep time as they use content to answer commonly asked questions
- Increased sales and shorter sales cycle
- Better alignment leads to less employee churn and happier teams
- Visibility around which content produces ROI
Attracts higher quality leads
The sales team begins to heavily influence the content that is produced as well as the priority of which content gets produced and when. This ensures that real buyers are getting answers to their most pressing questions BEFORE they even jump on a sales call.
This ultimately leads to attracting higher qualified prospects. As buyers read your blog articles and watch your videos, the qualified buyers will funnel through to the sales team while the unqualified will stop engaging and won’t ever jump on that sales call. While this has the benefit of attracting better quality leads, it also has an extra benefit associated with it…
Saves your sales rep time as they use content to answer commonly asked questions
As you attract higher quality leads, your sales reps spend more time selling to leads that are qualified than trying to figure out which of their leads are qualified and which aren’t. This means less time wasted, more time selling, and more value for your buck.
Increased sales and shorter sales cycle
As content is produced from the Revenue Team, that content is used not only to attract new buyers, but also to close deals from buyers already in the sales cycle.
As a part of the framework of They Ask, You Answer, sales reps assign “homework” to their prospects in the form of educational blog articles or videos. This helps answer buyer questions and increases trust. This process is known as Assignment Selling.
If a prospect visits 30 pages or more of a website, there is an 80% chance that they’ll buy. If they view 30 pages or fewer, there’s a 15-20% chance that they’ll buy. Marcus Sheridan, the author of They Ask, You Answer, tested this by assigning prospects at least 30 pages to read before each sales call to see if it would help closing rates. After implementing this process, his closing rates went from 25% to over 80%.
Ultimately, by following this process, sales close rates increase and the sales cycle becomes shorter.
Ultimately, by following this process, sales close rates increase and the sales cycle becomes shorter.
Sales and marketing teams are fully aligned, trust each other, and have mutual respect. They have an open line of communication and meet regularly, which means that content creation becomes a revenue generating asset to your company.
On top of this, the sales team understands and sees the value of their role in creating content that drives qualified traffic, leads and sales, which ultimately makes them more fulfilled and happier in their roles.
Similarly, the marketing team sees more value in their work. As they can see which content produces revenue for the company, they are able to see the real impact their work has on the sales team, and on the company overall.
This leads to less employee churn, happier teams, and more revenue.
Visibility around which content produces ROI
You’ll need to make sure you have the right systems setup in order to have full visibility over sales and marketing activities. However, if you do have the right systems setup, then you will be able to see ROI for specific pieces of content.
Here’s an example of this at RedPandas:
When marketing can see which content produces ROI, it gives them the ability to:
- Use these insights to continue producing content that is likely to generate revenue
- Report on ROI to stakeholders to demonstrate value in their role
When salespeople can see which content produces ROI, it:
- Helps them respect and understand the role marketing plays in helping them achieve their KPIs, which leads to stronger collaboration and ultimately more sales.
- Gives them the ability to optimise the sales process by sharing more of the content that produces ROI, leading to shorter sales cycles and higher close rates.
Revenue Teams clearly have a range of benefits and you should definitely work to set up a Revenue Team in your business.
What does a Revenue Team do?
In order for a revenue team to be successful, there are a few prerequisites that must be met. First, the entire company must be committed to becoming the number one teacher in their industry, with a focus on answering all of the questions that their ideal buyers have. The sales team must also adopt a strategy called assignment selling, where they assign homework to prospects in the form of content that answers common questions that come up during the sales process.
The company must also have one person who is responsible for creating or overseeing the creation of content in-house. Eventually, once content starts working and the organisation has bandwidth, there should also be an eventual commitment towards bringing video production expertise in-house with a videographer.
The day-to-day operations of a revenue team include these core recurring activities:
- Weekly or fortnightly revenue team meetings where they discuss the content that has been published and its value, the content that is currently in production, and the performance of previous content for sales.
- Brainstorming sessions to come up with new content ideas by answering questions such as “What do your buyers have the biggest doubts or worries about?”
- Measuring the quality of sales enablement content by asking follow-up questions such as “Why are they asking this question?” and “When are they asking this question in the sales process?”
- Fortnightly Team Reports to update the team on what was done last and what’s next.
- Monthly Newsletter to showcase content wins and sales wins from the efforts of the Revenue Team.
Let’s delve into what each of these look like.
Weekly / Fortnightly Team Meetings
These meetings follow the same agenda every single time. In these meetings, we ask four questions:
- What assignment selling content (written and video) has been published since you last met, and how is it valuable?
- What assignment selling content (written and video) is currently in the production pipeline?
- How has the previously published assignment selling content (written and video) been performing for sales?
- What questions are you currently being asked by buyers in the sales process that should have a piece of content created for it?
This gives the marketing team members an understanding of what content is working for sales and what new content might be relevant to create.
On top of this, it gives sales reps the ability to contribute to the production of content by sharing their ideas and keeps them up to date on what content is being produced and is available for their use.
Brainstorming Sessions
It is possible to combine the brainstorming session with the Weekly / fortnightly team meetings. Either way, in a brainstorm session, the sales team will generally answer the following questions in a discussion format with the marketing team:
- What questions do you get asked that immediately indicate the buyer is not close to ready to make a decision?
- What do your clients and buyers push back on the most?
- What are your buyer’s biggest doubts or worries (with respect to the product, the process, the company)?
- What do your buyers have to convince the key decision-makers of?
Answering these questions will result in content ideas. For example, a sales rep working for a Facebook Advertising company might answer the third question with “The customer is generally worried about the ROI on their ads. They’re worried about making a decision and not getting results”. This then acts as a content idea – the marketing team can produce content that explains the factors that influence ROI, as well as material sharing previous ROI results with similar clients.
As you can see, by answering these questions, you’ll end up coming up with a list of relevant content ideas for marketing to produce. Now, instead of marketing coming up with the ideas, marketing and sales are working together to produce something that speaks directly to buyers. If you want to take this brainstorming to the next level, check out our guide on using the concept of the stages of customer awareness to brainstorm and organise content.
Measuring the Quality of Sales Enablement Content
It’s important to actually test the quality of each content idea before using it in the process. You can use this process as part of the brainstorming meeting, or you can separate it into your own meeting – it totally depends on you!
Here’s how you can test the quality of each content idea – for every content idea, ask the following questions:
- Is this a real question being asked? This sounds like a silly question, but you’ll find that your sales team will, more often than not, give you questions that they say their prospects are asking, but in reality, it’s really just questions that they wished their prospects were asking.
- Is this the EXACT question being asked, in the words of the prospect? Or have you reworded it in any way, based on what you know the actual problem is? NOTE it should always be in the words of your prospect, and paraphrasing SHOULD NOT occur.
- Why are they asking this question? Did they ask this proactively? Or is it in response to something we told them, asked them to do, or something else? Is it a question in response to us saying no to something?
- When are they asking this question in the sales process? Is it always at a particular stage of the sales process? Is there no specific time, just a general question that comes up randomly?
Team Reports
A weekly team report is a must-have for any revenue team. It’s a report on what has been done and what needs to be done moving forward on the content side, and it’s sent to the entire team before the weekly meeting.
The main purpose of this report is to ensure that the sales team is aware of all the content available for them to use in their “assignment selling” strategy.
The report is organised in a structured format, starting with an overview and introduction. Then, it includes a list of the published revenue content strategy pieces, with context, use cases, and perceived value included in each.
It also includes a preview of what’s coming down the pipeline, with estimated dates of publication (although they are sometimes subject to change). This helps build trust between the content team and the sales team and shows that you care about their role.
There are tools like Basecamp and Notion that can be used to organise and share the weekly team report for easy access and visibility for the entire revenue team.
It’s good to give recognition to the team members who are working on the content, as it motivates and encourages them to work harder.
Here’s an example of what a team report could look like:
To start, your report could be a lot more basic and shorter but the above gives you a good idea of where these reports can eventually evolve to.
Quarterly Individual One on One Meetings with Sales Contributors
As part of a Revenue Team, one of the key responsibilities is to hold quarterly one-on-one meetings with each member of the sales team. The goal of these meetings is to understand each sales team member on an individual basis and learn about what success looks like for them.
The marketing team needs to understand this on an individual basis for each member of the sales team, so that they can help create content that will help them achieve these goals. To enable this, I recommend that the marketing team meets with each member of the sales team once per quarter for 30 minutes. Over time, the marketing team will understand how the sales team works and what they can do to help bolster their success in sales, which will ultimately drive revenue.
These meetings may seem like a lot, but they are crucial for ensuring open communication and collaboration between the two sides of the revenue team. They should become commonplace within your organisation to make sure the sales and marketing teams are working together to attract the right leads and convert them into customers.
During these meetings, you can discuss various topics, but here are a few prompt questions to consider:
- How often are you using content in the sales process?
- What specific challenges or barriers stop you from using content in the sales process?
- What opportunities have you spotted where we could be using an ‘assignment’ in the sales process?
- What does success in your role look like for you?
- What are your goals?
- What can the marketing department do to help you achieve those goals?
By understanding the sales team’s individual needs and goals, the marketing team can create targeted content that will help drive revenue and help the sales team achieve success.
Monthly Newsletter
How do you know if content is working?
You’ll find that content will always be the most important job for marketers, however, for everyone else in the team, it will usually be dead last on their list. How do you tackle this, when a core priority is to ensure everyone is on board with content production?
The way that you handle this is by ensuring that every month, an internal content wins newsletter is sent to your entire Revenue Team. The Marketing team would be responsible for this.
The newsletter should:
- Tell everyone the purpose of the newsletter at the very top, EVEN if everyone already knows and it’s not the first newsletter.
- Spotlight traffic and growth wins. Celebrate and explain why.
- Share what pieces of content are generating the most leads.
- Showcase a closed deal, start to finish, and every piece of content that led to its ultimate close.
What does Success look like for a Revenue Team?
How do you determine success from failure for a Revenue Team?
The success of a revenue team can be broken up into three areas:
Alignment
- Sales and marketing teams are fully aligned, trust each other, and have mutual respect. They have an open line of communication, meeting at least once a week.
- The sales team understands and sees the value of their role in creating content that drives qualified traffic, leads, and sales.
- Salespeople are more fulfilled and happier in their roles.
- Marketers see more value in their work, taking pride in the direct connection between what they produce and the revenue generated for their company.
Content Creation
- The sales team heavily influences the editorial calendar, as well as the priority of which content gets produced and when.
- The content being created by your company attracts better, more qualified prospects and customers.
- Sales knows how much revenue this content is creating.
- You are creating content for buyers already in the sales process, not just for attracting new visitors and leads.
Sales Cycle
- The length of the sales cycle decreases, where leads become customers or clients faster than before.
- You’re moving as much of the sales process online, to meet the demand of consumers for online research, thus giving them more control over the buying process than ever before.
- Many of the questions once answered face-to-face (or at least by a human in sales) can now be answered by content on your website that is easily self-discovered by visitors. (This includes transparency around your pricing.)
- You find yourself consistently selling products and services on the first sales call.
The more things you can tick off above, the greater success your Revenue Team is having. At RedPandas, we use our own in-house measurement of scale to determine success of a Revenue Team when working with our clients.
How to Run Effective Revenue Team Meetings?
Running an effective revenue team meeting is crucial for driving sales and revenue. Here are some steps you can take to ensure that your content brainstorm is productive and effective:
- Invite key players from both marketing and sales. Make sure to include subject matter experts who the salespeople go to for advice on the company’s solutions, products, and services.
- For larger organisations with multiple divisions, it can be beneficial to break up the content brainstorm sessions by division. This way, the content created will directly impact each division uniquely and separately.
- Create a value proposition for your meeting. Show the sales team how these meetings will directly add to the company’s bottom line and help them sell faster. This will encourage participation and motivation.
- Determine what success looks like for the meeting. Set clear outcomes and goals, such as determining three key questions that are asked in the middle of the sales process.
- Set a timeframe for the meeting. These meetings don’t need to last for hours, ideally, they should last 20 minutes or less. Make sure to have hard start and stop times and explain that for this effort to impact lead quality, the brainstorm needs to happen periodically (either fortnightly or monthly).
By following these steps, you can make sure that your revenue team meetings are productive and effective in driving sales and revenue.
So, what’s next?
Hopefully, you can see the value in forming a Revenue Team to increase traffic, leads and sales in your company. Forming a Revenue Team is actually a small part of a larger business and marketing framework called ‘They Ask, You Answer’ (TAYA).
To learn more about how you can implement TAYA for your business, check out these resources:
