Inspired by Jeff Ignacio's poll a few weeks back on whether or not to use Stage 0 Opportunities and the lively comments section that ensued, I wrote a few words on operations and and alignment around booked meetings -> qualified opportunities on the RevOps Impact newsletter. This is something I've thought a lot about, having lived the process as an SDR, and having managed/implemented the process in various flavors of go-to-market operations. Many thanks to Jeff for starting the conversation and sharing the mic! - Part 1 focuses on some (certainly not all!) foundational questions and considerations before thinking about systems implementation. - Part 2 (not published yet) will go much deeper into the weeds, highlighting the pros and cons of each approach. This was a great excuse to chat with + feature some other folks in the revops community whose voices I am excited to feature. Looking forward to hearing thoughts on what resonates, what doesn't, and anything you would add!
Jeff Ignacio
9mo
I'm a fan of how clearly you've thought through these processes Christina Zhou!
Making the complex simple. Improving business processes in both sales and operations.
9moI definitely geek out on this stuff. I was part of a long chat in RevGenuis' slack channel on this very topic with Philipp Smirnov and Klemen Hrovat. I'm a big fan of stage 0 as you call it, because I like tracking my sales stages based on my sales process. I think that having Meeting Booked as the first stage is a good way to keep tabs on no-show rate as you pointed out, and it also makes it easier to follow-up with no-shows. One thing that I've done before in some places ive worked is tie some qualification to the Account. Budget and the actual contact having influence are definitely more time-related opportunity qualifiers, but some things like specific software needs for integrations and indicators on the size of the business, like # of invoices sent monthly or # of staff in a certain department can be more or less tied to the account. Once an account is qualified, it's not impossible for it to become unqualified, but it isn't as easy as a person changing jobs or something. Then once you have an Account status of qualified you can tie opportunity stages to that, so that an Opp can't go into Proposal Sent until the Account is Qualified, etc.