Who Owns Revenue?

It’s a simple question: who in your organization owns revenue? Maybe you have a Chief Revenue Officer to point to and say, “they do”. Most companies, however, are not so cut and dry. And even if you have a CRO, is it really just their responsibility?

We believe real revenue generation is a cross-enterprise, all-hands effort, with everyone in the company playing a role, no matter how big or small, from the VP of Sales down to the shipping clerk ensuring product ships on time or contract manager making sure billing will be set up accurately.  When you understand all the steps and intricacies of your revenue cycle, you will see that nearly everyone in your organization has a hand in unlocking, growing and protecting revenue.

Let’s be careful with this broad of a view, though. When everyone is responsible for revenue, who do you hold accountable to it?

This thorny problem is why we narrow our focus to four primary business functions when we approach revenue generation through RevClarity. Two we consider as having a direct impact on revenue, and two are critical, but indirect revenue generators. This allows us to map opportunities for revenue across these functions and build business cases to capitalize on their potential.

(And don’t worry, the secondary drivers and blockers of revenue always get discovered, too, so everyone is part of the solution.)

So, who owns revenue generation? Let’s look at our four main influencers.

Direct Revenue Owners

Sales

The most obvious and most direct influence on revenue is the sales team. Selling a product or service is the basic building block of revenue generation. The sales team can take several forms, from a direct hierarchy of Sales Leaders -> Account Executives -> Inside or Field Sales Agents, or it can be flatter, with teams of experts coming together to pursue specific opportunities.

In highly transactional environments, where most products or services are sold directly to customers through digital experiences, the sales team may have a broader definition, including the merchandising team and order management.

This team is the clear first stop when revenue generation hits a snag. It’s very true that the sales team has direct impact on the following revenue generation functions:

• New customer acquisition
• Account expansion
• Cross-selling and upselling
• Pipeline management

And several more.

Regardless of form, sales does not exist in a vacuum, and all those functions are heavily dependent upon other business functions performing efficiently and effectively.

Finance

In many organizations, the finance team may be considered more of an indirect influence on revenue, however in our experience, they have far more control and impact than may appear at first glance.

Often, it is the finance team that:

• Creates overall revenue and growth goals
• Sets product and service pricing
• Manages overall spending, including investments in headcount and technology
• Collects payment from customers

That last one is the very definition of direct impact on revenue. And, when our clients bring us on to help them rethink revenue generation, it’s frequently in the finance department that we uncover some of the most impactful opportunities to protect or grow revenue.

Finance also happens to be one of the departments that is consistently tasked to aggregate everyone’s efforts around revenue generation, which is why focusing solely on the direct influencers isn’t enough.

Indirect Revenue Owners

Marketing

Quantifying the revenue impact of marketing efforts has been the white whale of many organizations, and with new tools, it’s easier than ever to assign ROI to campaigns. However, the truth of the matter is that much of marketing activity, including branding, has more of an indirect impact on revenue generation.

Of course, that doesn’t lessen the value of such things as:

• Brand consistency
• Cross-channel advertising
• Customer segmentation and personalized experiences
• Product and service marketing through educational content
• Promotions and other specialized offers

All of these influence how a customer views your company, your products, and whether they want to spend their money with you. Marketing is the heart of your lead generation engine.

And if there is one thing we have learned in all our years helping clients, the leads created through marketing efforts need to be both well qualified and fed to the sales team in a timely manner, or else precious opportunities for revenue will be wasted. The marketing team may not be on the phone with customers closing deals, but without them, there are far fewer deals to close.

Of course, marketing is not the only department whose efficiency translates to better revenue generation.

[Read More: AI-Powered Routing to turn Marketing Leads into Sales Success]

Operations

The purview of the operations team varies significantly from industry to industry and from company to company. Your organization may not even call this team “operations”. However, for revenue generation purposes, we consider this the team who is handling:

• Order logistics and fulfillment
• Product / service delivery
• Order exception processes
• Customer success / satisfaction

Basically, we define it as the behind-the-scenes functions that help customers get what they need and keep them coming back for more.

Operations is critical to revenue generation because without fulfilling the promise of your products and services, you will have generated one sale—but no more. However, it’s often at this level where hidden opportunities for revenue improvement exist, such as understanding where order exceptions are being generated and working to fix the root cause.

When the operations team runs like a well-oiled machine, the whole revenue generation wheel turns smoothly.

Revenue Generation is Collaborative

Hopefully, it’s clear by now that no one person can ever “own” revenue generation. It requires every department to work in concert and push towards that same goal. Following the 80/20 rule, these four business functions are a great place to start investing revenue generating barriers and opportunities. The other 20% becomes apparent through a deeper investigation as the people, process and technology revenue roadblocks can be found anywhere.

However, given the complexity and breadth of stakeholders touching revenue generation, it can be difficult to step back and consider the big picture.

That’s why RevGen created RevClarity. We help you find alignment and uncover the revenue generating opportunities that can’t been seen when zoomed into just a single piece of the puzzle. Then, we give you a personalized report, and a business case with preliminary ROI, and clear next steps to turn this intelligence into revenue generating action.

Contact us today to speak to an expert about how RevClarity would work at your organization.

Robert Sunker is RevGen Partner’s Chief Strategy Officer and is passionate about operationalizing strategy into long-term revenue generation.