How Lead Generation and Revenue Operations Work Together: A Conversation With Tony Furnas
Our Senior Manager of Marketing, Tony Furnas, breaks down the difference between lead generation, demand generation, revenue operations, and the nitty-gritty of implementing them all.
When it comes to helping your business grow, it truly takes a village. Your sales team can’t do it alone without the help of marketing, customer service, and other teams pitching in to help out with lead and demand generation, and even revenue operations. If you’re still unsure what revenue operations even is, don’t worry. Tony has it covered.
How Do You Define “Lead Generation” and “Revenue Operations”?
Tony Furnas: Lead generation is truly the collection of data. These would be actions like getting buyers to submit their information, showing the value of your product, and converting leads to paying customers. Revenue operations are the intersection where sales, marketing, and customer success merge to create a more cohesive customer journey through the optimization of front-end and back-end processes. At its core, RevOps is mostly responsible for the software that all revenue-generating teams interact with, and how best to optimize their experiences to spend more time generating revenue.
How Does Demand Generation Tie Into This Mix? That’s Important Too, Right?
TF: Demand generation is hugely important, and also vastly different from lead generation, especially when you’re a SaaS product that has a free flavor. Remember, lead generation is the process of collecting data and converting non-users to paying customers. Demand generation is where you introduce a problem to would-be users, that they didn’t know they had. This is where you can increase the awareness of your brand and let users engage with free materials, all while having a more educational undertone to the experience rather than just putting a lead in front of your audience.
I think an interesting aspect of demand generation is when you have a free version of your product, where you still need to keep your free users engaged, and find ways to deliver value to those free users, all whilst teasing out the benefit of becoming a paid user. This is where RevOps can step back in and make that transition from a free user to a paying customer a seamless experience once someone is ready to raise their hand.
What Other Departments Typically Work With Your Team?
TF: The marketing department at UpCity is a highly agile one, where we take on the roles of revenue operations, sales enablement, and system administration all while driving our branding and user experience efforts through our marketing initiatives. We’re a demand and revenue-focused department, so we work hand in hand with our sales and success teams to make their work more efficient through the software that they use. We are also very focused on the customer journey, so we work very closely with our product and SEO teams to align our roadmaps and keep the messaging and user experience cohesive throughout the lifecycle of a user.
What Advice Do You Have For Our Customers Trying To Improve Their Lead Generation Right Now?
TF: Revenue attribution. It is an absolute necessity to understand where your leads are coming from and which have the highest probability of closing. Identifying your strongest funnel of leads allows you not only to optimize and focus on the leads with the highest intent, but you can also identify where you are weak and make improvements to that.
UpCity Revenue Operations Specialist, Jordy Richardson adds: Get your data and analytics right so you can make informed data-driven decisions!
TF: Lead gen, demand gen, and RevOps are all practices that must be constantly tested and refreshed, it’s more of a great experiment so it’s pivotal to know where your money is coming from.
About the author
Rebecca helps keep all things content running at UpCity. Prior to joining, she was a magazine editor at an agency for several award-winning publications based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, and a content specialist for several brands within the SMB/B2B landscape. She also has significant experience in digital content creation, most notably targeting hunters and anglers (despite being a vegetarian) during her time at Gander Outdoors. Rebecca has also worked in PR, covering a diverse terrain of products and events, including the promotion of local musicians and music festivals and the latest craft beer offerings from local breweries.
