Operations Roles Explained: Sales Ops, Marketing Ops & Revenue Ops 🤔

When I first entered the business world 13 years ago, the concept of revenue operations (RevOps), sales operations (Sales Ops), and marketing operations (Marketing Ops) was practically nonexistent. Back then, operations were seen as a back-office function with little strategic value.

Fast forward to today, LinkedIn recently announced that over the past five years, “Head of RevOps” - also known as CRO - is one of the fastest-growing job titles in the US.

The rise of these operations roles is a testament to how the business world has changed. There is clearly a growing importance of data-driven decision-making. But, as we all now know, ops roles aren’t just technical, they add strategic value as well.

However, we still get asked all the time: What's the difference between these operations roles? And why are they crucial for companies?

Let’s explore these questions and more.

Let's start with a basic definition of each role:

Revenue Operations

The role of RevOps focuses on revenue growth by aligning sales, marketing, and customer success efforts. RevOps uses data and technology to optimize processes and improve collaboration across teams.

Sales Operations

This role focuses on helping the sales team become more efficient and effective. It uses data and technology to streamline sales processes, improve forecasting, and optimize sales enablement.

Marketing Operations

This role focuses on helping the marketing team better perform. It uses data and technology to optimize marketing processes, track performance metrics, and improve marketing automation.

All three of these roles are critical to the success of a company, especially as data and technology have become more and more important.

So, what's the difference between these roles?

RevOps is essentially the overarching role that brings all the other operations roles together to drive revenue growth.

Sales Ops and Marketing Ops are subsets of RevOps that focus on their specific areas of the business.

As the business world becomes increasingly data-driven, operations roles are becoming more important than ever. Companies are beginning to realize that they need to have a strong ops team in place in order to keep up with and maintain their developing tech stack, as well as track, manage, and analyze their data. This will allow them to make data-driven decisions.

Which role does your company need? Feel free to chat with us for a consultation to help your company stay ahead of the curve.