Building a Revenue Engine

Revenue and growth are arguably two of the most important elements to a successful business. Sales has long been perceived as the revenue hub of an organisation, with marketing its costly but necessary support function.

Savvy organisations know this model doesn’t work.  The most successful businesses are focusing on building well oiled revenue engines that deliver effective growth by focusing on operational efficiencies at every stage of the end to end customer journey.

What is a Revenue Engine?

A revenue engine is the systematic, repeatable and scalable processes that drive consistent revenue generation. This is achieved by integrating strategy; sales processes; digital marketing; technology and analytics.  By applying data led continuous learning and testing to revenue goals, the revenue engine will not only deliver regular leads and sales conversions, but will constantly improve over time.

The revenue engine foundations are focused on collaboration and efficiencies across three revenue led areas:

Marketing Excellence – Transforming marketing from being a cost centre to a revenue generator.

Sales Excellence – Identifying and removing friction at every point of the sales journey.

Customer Excellence – Customer retention and growth through continuous improvement and best in class delivery.

Benefits of an effective revenue engine

• Lower customer acquisition costs
• Accurate forecasting
• Sales pipeline consistency
• Reduction in spend on ineffective sales and marketing initiatives

Ledger Bennett and the Revenue Engine

We’re a demand generation agency for B2B businesses.  We specialise in building collaborative processes between marketing, sales and the customer that enable your business to create reliable revenue forecasts and deliver business growth.

6 steps we consider when building revenue engines for our clients:

• Revenue gap analysis- Strategic level audit of decision making; process; technology; sales and marketing funnels; revenue patterns; forecasting.

• Demand generation- Marketing strategy; digital and offline activity; lead generation; lead nurturing; lead scoring; marketing to sales handoff.

• Sales enablement- Defining a repeatable sales process; identifying and removing friction at each step; sales automation; chat bots; training and development.  

• Customer excellence – Onboarding experience; customer services process; customer feedback; building customer requirements into future strategy; cross selling; advocate programmes.

• Talent strategy- Gap analysis in your current team based on revenue engine objectives; short/medium term talent strategy; smart working processes; flexible recruitment; training and development.

• Data – Data strategy based on revenue engine objectives; identifying data sources; building relevant data dashboards; reporting.

Why hiring a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is the Foundation of Your Revenue Engine

The Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is a relatively new role that originated from Silicon Valley but is becoming more and more commonplace in businesses outside of the US.  The CRO is responsible for maximising outputs from all revenue generation processes in an organisation.

Marketing excellence, sales excellence and customer excellence are the core of a smooth functioning revenue engine and they are also central responsibilities of a CRO’s job role. Therefore, the CRO is a perfectly aligned internal champion of the revenue engine, so their involvement from the outset will make it all the more likely to be successful.

Having said that, Chief Revenue Officer is as much a state of mind as it is a dedicated senior role.  Not every business will be ready to hire a full time CRO but may well be ready to start thinking like one, so accessing external expertise part-time to start building your revenue engine and act as an impartial adviser to multiple departments is a great place to start.

Additional Resources here:

• What is a Chief Revenue Officer?
• Chief Revenue Officer Job Description
• Accelerating your Revenue Engine