The Revenue Bowtie
The first thing any Revenue Operations professional or team must do is understand the full Revenue Bowtie in the company they operate.
How Do We Automate and Align?
The Bowtie is the top level model for the Customer Journey and the tools and actions that drive it. As a Prospect progresses through Awareness > Education > Selection > Commit > Onboard > Adoption > Expansion there are underlying processes that each departmental function owns that ultimately create the Customer Journey. The bowtie ensures we are aligned even when tools and processes change.
The Revenue Bowtie is comprised of a top level journey that a prospect progresses through, the actions or activity that are performed in each bowtie section and the tools that are used to accomplish those actions. The Lifecycle stages are the internal gates used for measurement of progression through the bowtie. Not to be confused with Lead Status or Opportunity stages, Lifecycles are a wholistic marker for the customer.
Tools and Actions
From the bowtie we can create a list of tools and actions used for each section of the Bowtie. This allows Revenue Operations to drill deeper into who owns tools, who is responsible for the actions, and start to see where there may be gaps. Each company has their own tech stack, integrations, and actions, so it is important to document section by section to ensure alignment.
Lifecycle Stages
The Lifecycle stages are internal gates for measuring the Bowtie. By tracking the Lifecycle we can understand conversions, time in each stage, and be very clear on entry and exit criteria. It is important that from Marketing to Sales to Customer Success everyone understands the definition of each stage so they understand what actions they need to take to progress prospects and customers.
Customer Journey
Last but not least is the Customer Journey. This type of flow chart is focused on the next level down from the Bowtie. Here we start getting into the details of the actions, how they push the customer through their respective tools, if there is an automated handoff or a manual one, and identify where we want to make improvements by proposing new steps in the Journey. These new steps can be new actions or even new tools to add to the tech stack or remove redundant tech. This is the true map of the company and can encompass top of funnel, active funnel, invoicing, adoption, to renewal.