What does the Winter 2024 GTM Benchmark Report have in store for us? Doug and Jess discuss key findings from the report and how companies performed, along with issues and challenges that everyone is facing today. They provide perspective on the challenges sellers and buyers are facing along with recommendations for what revenue operations should focus on.
Audio:
Video:
Additional Resources:
- [RevOps Show] Episode 80: Dangerous Metrics - Finding a Better Way to Measure Business Success
- [RevOps Show] Episode 88: 5 Priorities to Strengthen Sales Manager's Performance
- [Webinar] The 4 Cornerstones to Drive Sales Performance Improvement
Show Notes:
Pre-Show Banter:
- Doug added a new sound effect to his sound deck.
- Doug and Jess talk through the final four teams in the NCAA tournament where Doug confuses Jess about who is actually in the final four.
- The eclipse is coming up. Doug thinks there should be a team meeting where they play Pink Floyd’s Eclipse song. Not only does Jess not care about the eclipse, she doubts the team will get the reference.
If you'd like to follow along in the report with Doug and Jess, you can access the report here.
It’s another 9:30AM recording for the RevOps Show, so we all know it’ll be a great episode. Doug came across the Winter 2024 Go-to-Market Benchmark Report from GTM Partners. The report’s findings were not positive. The content confirmed a lot of existing assumptions and observations both Doug and Jess have seen in the market.
Regardless, the report is well worth a read.
Note: Be careful that you understand where the data is coming from in any report you read.
Findings:
- 56% of companies missed their 2023 revenue plan
- 57% failed to build adequate pipeline
- 72% are still seeing increasing sales cycle times (a metric Doug believes is very overused)
- SMBs performed better relative to the other areas of business
- They saw a decreasing performance in the second half of the year
Doug’s take is that boardrooms and executives are spending more time talking about monetizing relationships than they are talking about solving for relationships. Jess was surprised about SMBs outperforming everyone else. There was something in the report talking about healthy growth and they talked about overbuilding inefficient growth engines. Revenue operations grew and Jess was surprised by how much it grew, but pipeline velocity went down. Lots of companies were focused on trying to grow revenue operations, and didn’t improve their pipeline.
More findings:
- 57% pipeline worse than expected last year
- 72% sales velocity below expectations
- 56% failed to attain revenue
One area that surprised Doug from this was that there was consistency from across all segments in terms of the metrics. They broke up the segments as small business (0-250 employees), mid-market (51-1,000 employees) and enterprise (1,001+ employees). All of the metrics are consistent across the segments.
One mistake Doug is seeing is that too much of quality is being based on proximity to the buy. Higher intent is being seen as higher quality and that’s a myth.
Going into ‘23 companies were concerned. The expectation was that the economy was going to be worse than it was. They were confident they would be able to grow through it. They did not. Because of that, they had to react and that led to increased cost cutting and increased layoffs. Enterprise was more stable. SMB was more volatile, yet SMB seems to be ahead in the recovery right now.
A lot of money seems to be pouring into RevOps, which is defined as the analytical information needed to power and hold your teams accountable. In the under 200 employee segment in ‘21, ‘22, investments in this function were down about 2%. In the first half of ‘23 they were down about 19%. In the second half of ‘23 they were up 64%. In the mid-market segment, they were up 3% in ‘21 and ‘22. They were down 13% in the first half of ‘23 and up 42% in the second half. In the enterprise segment they were up 13% in ‘21 and ‘22 they were down 4%. In ‘23 they were up 22%.
In all the things that Doug and Jess have talked about in terms of the RevOps function, this is the place for RevOps to prove itself. Revenue operations is an investment in the structure and system of your organizations, and that takes 9-15 months to really show impact.
If you take a look at our 4 cornerstones webinar, we hit on all of these points about the crucial importance of learning and development. Combined with some other reports and our firsthand experience, we’re in the end stage of the shift.
We’ve been talking about the new buyer for 20 years. The dynamics and structure between buyer and seller have been changing for those 20 years. Don’t underestimate the lag.
What can RevOps do? Get into figuring out what your growth model is. What are the key drivers? What are your key metrics?
Buyers are overwhelmed and confused today. They don’t know how to buy. They shouldn’t know how to buy on the big purchases because they don’t deal with them on an ongoing basis. Sellers need to get back into a position to lead the process. The problem is that sellers are also overwhelmed and confused and they have no signal on where or how to spend their time. They’re spending too much time on low-value, high-fragile opportunities.
What needs to happen? The single best thing that an organization can do that plays into the role of RevOps is build the system and structure that provides the signal and prompts to guide actions and activity. Focus on the core business.
Jess’s Takeaways:
- From Clayton Christensen, in business the new game begins before the old game ends.
- Don’t underestimate the lag.
Next Steps:
-
Follow Jess, Doug & Lift on socials for updates on the show or other insights:
-
Subscribe to the show on Spotify & Apple Podcasts
-
Check out Let's Play RevOps on Twitch for more commentary on RevOps
-
Coming Soon: Episode 90!