Welcome to RISE UP, where every other Friday I share one tip for reaching your potential and building a legendary revenue career.
Time to revenue is one of those phrases I love talking about. So much so that I've been dubbed the Prime Minister of Revenue.
Put simply, time to revenue is the time your company spends collecting revenue-critical signals, analyzing them, and acting on them to see a lift in revenue.
- How long does it take a rep to manage their deal?
- How long does it take a manager to know where they have risk in their pipeline?
- How long does it take a regional director to roll up their forecast and accurately call if they are going to meet, beat, or miss on revenue?
A few months ago, I sat down with my friend and fellow CEO, Nick Metha of Gainsight, to really dive deep into this concept of time to revenue. It's worth a dedicated newsletter because if you get it wrong, you'll stall on the runway of building a legendary career in revenue.
Let's dive in.
What prevents companies from mastering time to revenue?
Using legacy systems.
The "3-headed Hydra" (CRM + spreadsheets + business intelligence tools) all slow companies down.
Why? None of these platforms were built to run revenue. When organizations try to use them to manage their revenue processes, they become paralyzed - chasing down revenue signals across disparate systems.
✅ CRM: Poor data quality. Highly manual (recording of tasks) process. Teams are burdened with administrative duties, such as recording sales information and noting customer details.
✅ Spreadsheets: Rarely a single source of truth. Everyone uses their own! This leads to a challenge when trying to consolidate.
✅ BI tools: Focus is on the big picture. Doesn't give teams the simplicity, speed, and insights they demand.
These inefficiencies greatly increase time to revenue. And a high time to revenue is not something to brag about.
In fact, a high time to revenue means revenue leak is rampant: Slipped deals, leads that never get followed up on, targets that never get touched.
And the impact of revenue leak is profound:
Revenue Leak impact, as reported by BCG
The answer? Revenue precision.
From pervasive revenue leak to total revenue precision. How to reduce time to revenue.
Efficiency. Revenue. Growth.
That's the result of reaching total revenue precision - the full, predictable, and repeatable capture of revenue.
Nick and I talked about the shift from revenue as an outcome to revenue as a process.
When you reframe revenue as a process, it's easier to conceptualize how mitigating revenue leak leads you down the revenue precision path.
When done effectively, people, systems, and processes must work together to:
- Uncover blind spots
- Encourage inner (and intra) team collaboration
- Consolidate tools and processes
Specifically, here is what I recommend doing today, broken down into two main revenue roles:
Reps need a system to help them look across their inventory and quickly, clearly identify where risk exists, and highlight where they should spend time. This system must be automated, not manual (as it is for many reps today). Net result: More time spent on the floor actually selling.
Boards, CROs, and other executive leadership need the ability to have an always-on interface that is proactively telling them if they're going to meet/beat/miss their number. This group doesn't have time to wait to have another team build a report. They need this number at their fingertips today.
As a recap, to build a legendary career in revenue, you need to:
Key in on the leading indicators, the digital signals.
Find moments where revenue leak is happening (and stop it).
Do a deep dive into the current systems and processes.
This all, ultimately, drives more predictability, efficiency, durability, and so on.
Mastering your time to revenue is your key to seeing more dents in your revenue chart - the good kind.
Until next time,
Andy Byrne
CEO, Clari
New playbooks for running revenue
Live Event: Charge: The Revenue Summit is coming to you live from San Francisco on September 12th & 13th. Network with revenue leaders across the street from Dreamforce to chat about how you can win more revenue moments. Grab your free spot here.
Article: Get a step-by-step guide on 8 ways to mitigate churn and come out on top during a wavering economy in this new blog by Clari's SVP of Product, Kurt Leafstrand.
Podcast: Tune into the latest episode of The Run Revenue Show with Mark Cranney, GTM Advisor, to get his strategic guidance on how to navigate downturns and adapt to market changes.