Revenue-org wide goal setting is critical — but tricky. Matt Volm, CEO at RevOps Co-Op (the premier community for RevOps pros), provides this playbook to keep cross-functional revenue orgs aligned & smashing company-wide goals.

Matt provides a complete Playbook — including a multi-step process & series of templates — for OKR setting, monitoring, and reporting.

1. Company-wide

2. Revenue-team wide

3. Within specific teams — including how enablement functions like RevOps can do their own goal setting that aligns with company-wide goals.

One thing we loved about Matt’s playbook is how firmly he anchors Revenue OKRs in the company’s mission and goals. His OKR playbook ensures the broader company as well as the various revenue teams are rowing together in 1 direction.

Here's what you'll get:

• How to keep your company — and revenue org — rowing together in 1 direction

• Why goal-setting is particularly critical for revenue orgs

• How to set revenue-team wide OKRs — and how they intersect with team-specific OKRs

• Why RevOps should have it’s own OKRs

• How to set RevOps OKRs that are aligned with value

Revenue Org-Wide Reporting

Revenue orgs are complex, cross-functional machines. Many often-siloed teams have to align to hit top-level goals. So setting revenue-org wide goals is critical.

But how do you do that well? Teams are disparate. And each has different specialities.

Here's Matt's process:

1. Step back from the Revenue Org — and start top-down with your company-wide goals.

   1. The most important thing is to understand what it means for your company to win — e.g. if you’re Stripe, your goal might be “When engineers think Payments they think Stripe”

      
      

2. Continue to think at the company-wide level as you break the high level company-wide goal into 3-4 more specific “Objectives” the Revenue Org can own

   1. Revenue-wide Objectives should start from the overall revenue team’s contribution to hitting the company-wide goals — vs. any one specific team.

   2. If you hit the revenue-team Objectives, you should be well on your way to hitting the company-wide objective.

   3. Objectives are typically but not always qualitative vs. quantitative and feel aspirational. What do you want to be able to say about the world at the end of this period?

   4. In some cases, you may have a quantitative Objective (e.g. hitting an important revenue milestone) that’s unlocked by several more actionable and specific KRs coming together.

   5. Example Objectives: Successfully launch [a new market], hit $XM and unlock the series B, launch product X, or leapfrog competitor Y —> feel free to add some flavor like “Pull off the most amazing payments launch the world has ever seen”

      
      

3. Break each Objective into 3-4 concrete & measurable Key Results that, if true, would hit the Revenue Objective

   1. You should have 2-4 KRs per Objective. KRs should be concrete, measurable, and should each have 1 clearly defined owner empowered to work across teams to make them happen.

   2. Consider: how do Marketing, Sales, Success, and RevOps each contribute?

      
      

4. Revenue-wide OKRs can (and often should) co-exist with separate, team-specific OKRs that are more internally focused.

   1. While revenue-team wide OKR reporting should stay focused on the company goal, it’s common for teams to also have their own internal OKR process with team-specific goals.

   2. Even if the marketing org is only responsible for a couple KRs in the Revenue report, they’ll likely have a much broader set of internal goals. For instance, a marketing or sales org may internally set goals around hiring and morale (eNPS) that enable company-wide goals but don’t need to be surfaced company-wide.

   3. We particularly love Kevan’s Marketing OKR report here as a structured example of how a specific team might think about their OKRs.

      
      

5. Revenue-wide OKRs may co-exist with non-revenue OKRs that drive the same company-wide objectives

   1. In many cases, company-wide objectives will require execution from teams that sit outside of the revenue org. For instance, pulling off a successful launch may require the product team to ship the product or a number of improvements.

      
      

6. Monitor and report against OKR progress to goal

   1. Build accountability and maintain team focus with regular heartbeat checkins.

RevOps OKRs

As Matt is building the largest & most influential community of RevOps pros out there, he's also provided some guidance to RevOps pros. Matt recommends RevOps has it’s own goals in most cases (though it may be impractical in small orgs) that have concrete value and are as directly aligned with the overall revenue org’s goals as possible.

Matt recommends starting with how RevOps can influence revenue-org wide OKRs. This can be a tricky exercise — but is essential for aligning RevOps activities with clear, digestible business value.

Here are a few exercises he recommends for identifying good RevOps KRs:

1. Consider impact by team (examples):

• Sales: Automate a broken process → drive revenue by giving sellers more time to sell

• CS: Enable CS to more easily ID accounts ripe for expansion → improve expansion revenue

• Marketing: Improve conversion from demo page to MQL

2. Consider impact across people/ processes/ and tech

• People: Ensure all relevant teams are trained on new systems and processes.

• Processes: Streamline workflows to reduce manual tasks and improve efficiency.

• Tech: Implement and optimize tools that support revenue goals and provide actionable insights.

3. Consider "multi-alignment" where one RevOps key result can map to multiple team objectives

   
   

Ex #1: Revenue Target

If the company-wide goal is to hit a revenue target, the RevOps goals could be operational efficiencies that will support org in hitting that target

Ex #2: Product Launch

If the company-wide goal is to successfully launch a product, the RevOps goals could be to streamline processes and support systems that ensure a successful launch

Ex #3: Entering a new market

If the company-wide goal is to successfully enter a market, the RevOps goals could be to support market entry and operational scalability

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