October 4, 2023
by Jen Spencer
At the heart of every successful business is a highly coordinated revenue leadership team.
This team brings together key individuals from different departments to bring their own offerings to the table. Revenue leadership is critical in guiding an organization toward its financial goals, especially in dynamic fields such as marketing, sales, product, and customer success.
Allocating revenue for business development, dividends, and profit is challenging. Some might think that vision drives a brand, but actually, it's both vision and numbers.
From watching Shark Tank episodes to following the best revenue initiatives, a CEO goes through many seasons. This Industry Insights edition centers on how we frontload revenue processes at SmartBug Media and acquaint our teams with the best–in–class insights to fuel growth.
Revenue leadership all-hands is a powerful platform to discuss, plan, and analyze effective strategies that propel revenue growth. This meeting typically includes heads of critical departments such as sales, marketing, customer engagement, and operations.
At SmartBug Media, I lead the revenue leadership team meetings as the CEO. These meetings include key personnel such as:
The composition of the revenue leadership team will vary depending on the industry, company size, and unique business needs. The right mix of roles can open better pathways for growth and profitability, which has been evident with the roles we have taken up as revenue leaders.
There is a misconception that revenue teams are fixated on cutting corners.
Budget tightening is just one element of revenue strategy, and it does not always lead to shortfalls. Every revenue leadership meeting covers a list of actionable strategies to deploy resources and monitor budget-bound projects.
Here are some potential topics covered in a revenue leadership all-hands.
Regularly reviewing sales performance with the revenue leadership team is essential for staying on track, assessing sales strategies, and achieving goals.
These discussions provide a valuable opportunity to identify gaps between planned and actual sales and take quick remedial action. Additionally, they foster a culture of team accountability and recognize individual achievements, boosting morale.
At SmartBug Media, we understand that our marketing initiatives are an essential cog in the revenue machine — they command a substantial share of our revenue leadership team meetings.
By leveraging HubSpot analytics, we pay attention to lead generation and other ratios down the funnel, i.e., conversion metrics. More than just numbers, these metrics narrate a story of our connection with potential customers, our reach, and our influence.
Exploring new marketing strategies and channels helps us remain agile and empowers us to adapt to changing customer needs and market trends. It fosters alignment between our sales and marketing teams — a vital synergy that optimizes our lead-to-customer journey.
Like all of our business units, our marketing leadership tracks forward-looking KPIs that don’t simply report on what’s transpired but give us an opportunity to affect change within the sales period.
For example, each week we measure the number of consultation requests via form fills on our website. If we were a SaaS company, this would be our version of a demo request. As a marketing-driven company, these consultation requests are our north star.
We also track marketing-sourced sales-qualified leads (SQLs).
This metric encompasses “contact us” submissions and prospects with a high lead score (mutually determined by marketing and sales) to be considered sales-ready. It also includes individuals willing to engage with sales via an email agreement or a meeting link and those acquired through marketing efforts.
If we’re not on track to achieve our weekly goals, it’s important that we stop and understand why while also making necessary adjustments in our strategy, execution, or both.
Tip: Neglecting to include marketing in revenue leadership meetings can result in lost opportunities. The failure to exhibit the outcome of current campaigns affects the understanding of consumer behavior and market trends.
Discuss the reds (lost deals) and the greens (won deals) — greens more than red to standardize the pattern of lead nurturing.
Customer insights help with gaining a deeper understanding of customers' needs, preferences, and experiences to adjust t e product development lifecycle. Metrics like NPS, customer retention, and customer satisfaction are considered during revenue allocation and product research and development.
These are vital performance indicators for determining product-market fit which further signifies a good return on investment on the source capital.
Our teams have observed revenue growth and increased upsells and cross-sells by enhancing customer relationships. It also facilitates word of mouth and referral leads that have a convertible disposition.
Thorough and ongoing competitive analysis of immediate competitors ensures we don’t miss out on the latest innovations and trends related to products.
The idea is not to poach clients of other brands but to take inspiration from them. Their approach to customer acquisition would give us insight into how to continue our brand and invest better.
Different brands in the market have different business models. They sell on a unique value proposition and customer targeting. Our team has been able to cut through the noise and make a dent in customers’ minds by shortlisting media opportunities, public relations, and demand forecasting like competitors.
Product and pricing strategy directly influences revenue streams and overall business growth. Brands are likelier to achieve customer attention by evaluating product pricing and gathering customer feedback.
Though people say that price should never be compromised in business, the recent tilt to affordability and high-quality products has made brands rethink.
Changing the product and pricing strategy by offering more with less enabled us to be at the forefront of our client’s purchase preferences. We could tap untapped markets, cater to ROI-sensitive clients, and achieve growth by aligning products effectively with perceived value.
Ajit Ghuman, Founder of Monetizely and the author of the book "Price to Scale," underscores the significance of having an integrated approach to pricing strategy. He said that "Pricing and monetization strategies are core parts of what drives actual revenue and margin impact on a business. However, there is no clear monetization owner in a dispersed setting."
“ In an integrated revenue leadership team, this problem is solved. This team executes and evaluates data-driven pricing strategies in the context of GTM strategies and is able to course correct based on ongoing market information.”
Ajit Ghuman
Founder, Monetizely
A data-driven and integrated approach to pricing helps businesses create more revenue channels and secure themselves with cash equivalents to survive market thunderstorms.
Besides lean budgeting, our revenue teams also frame a set of best practices within teams. In the first leg of revenue planning, these teams allocate personnel resources, understand market perception, and frame a list of rules the organization should abide by.
Here is the list of organizational practices that are being followed by our revenue leadership teams.
Forecasting short- and long-term revenue investments is a key way to manage accounts and deals of past and present. A forward-thinking approach enables teams to proactively align resources, optimize capacity planning, and prepare for potential risks.
Customer success teams also have an ideal consumer persona (ICP) to break through sales objections, foster governance, and drive retention.
Successful sales recipes can act as a base for new hires. It can help design training programs, sales scripts, and simulations.
Operational efficiency is an umbrella term used to analyze current resources, technical feasibility, engagement channels, performance management measures, and other data-centric workflows.
Together, we thoroughly examine sales processes and workflows and seek out any inefficiencies or bottlenecks that might impede revenue generation capabilities.
These insightful discussions give rise to potential process improvements and the implementation of cutting-edge technologies, facilitate streamlined operations, heightened productivity, and, ultimately, robust business growth.
The profit channels paint a comprehensive picture of a company's fiscal health, serving as a guiding compass for strategic decision-making. Attributing retained earnings and profit into operating cash flows builds a good pipeline, maintains financial stability, and puts our brand in a strong position.
Conducting an in-depth analysis of budget utilization and cost control helps identify potential areas for cost savings and ensures that liquid finances and assets are managed.
It is vital to have a clear alignment of revenue goals and objectives.
It fosters unity and clarity within the team and ensures everyone understands the revenue targets or annual recurring revenue (ARR) for a financial year. Tracking strategic revenue targets and appointing project leaders helps build cost-effective project frameworks.
The constant evaluation of revenue targets not only prevents budget leaks but also identifies and addresses any roadblocks. Monitoring these strategy levels stabilizes liabilities and gives legroom to the operations team to produce a profit. Celebrating achieved milestones also leads to a positive team culture. It recognizes individual and group contributions that instill confidence within teams.
Feedback and collaboration are the lifeblood of our revenue leadership team meetings. Our commitment to promoting dialogue-based communication and cross-functional cooperation creates a vibrant and innovative environment. This culture helps ideas and insights flow freely and is highly valued.
Together, we tackle challenges, fostering a strong sense of unity and shared responsibility. Our brainstorming sessions become incubators for inventive, revenue-generating ideas. It fuels our creativity and strategic thinking as well.
At SmartBug Media, we always create a follow-up calendar.
Our video recordings and minutes of the meeting can be accessed in real-time. We take pride in recapping decisions and ensuring authenticity within our teams. There’s nothing worse than assuming all players know what moves to make next, only to discover that go-forward plans have been misinterpreted.
During revenue meetings, each action item should be carefully assigned to a specific individual or team, with clearly defined timelines for completion. This fosters a strong sense of accountability and ensures our strategies progress efficiently.
“At SmartBug Media, while planning our next meeting, we proactively review any necessary preparations of materials in advance. The systematic approach maximizes productivity, bridges knowledge gaps and drives real world execution.”
Jen Spencer
CEO, SmartBug Media
We also maintain a section of our revenue leadership team meeting agenda for long-term projects and immediate action items.
There’s no one-size-fits-all here. It’s up to our teams to prioritize the strategies that matter the most. Gone are the days of setting and forgetting any strategy or budget decision. The digital landscape is simply too fluid, the market can be too volatile, and technology is booming.
No strategy would come to fruition without a stable net income. Maintaining revenue with functional team-wide efforts would help survive the ever evolving market.
The newest digital trend in revenue, namely RevOps, would mark a huge shift in the business landscape, where revenue professionals would work in tandem with data, artificial intelligence, and intelligent automations to fuel brand growth.
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Jen Spencer is the CEO for SmartBug Media®,, the digital agency of choice for organizations looking to create resilient growth across the entire customer lifecycle. Jen subscribes to the notion that “we’re all in this together,” and that great communication leads to great partnership. She loves animals, technology, the arts, and really good scotch.
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