Anyone who has ever been responsible for revenue generation at a professional services firm understands that their revenue model is fundamentally different than a product-based company because they are selling an intangible. And while it is a common misconception that their sales cycles are longer, services companies do face many distinct revenue hurdles that often lead to broken revenue strategies.

What kind of unique revenue challenges do professional service firms have?

How do their revenue strategies differ from other industries?

Can a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) add value to service firms?

Globalization has given B2B companies access to a seemingly endless list of suppliers and buyers, lowering prices and shortening delivery times. That is, until a disruption is introduced into the global network that ripples through the system.

Some disruptions have a more limited scope (only affecting certain industries or regions), while others have a more widespread effect. The pandemic has been the widest reaching business disruption of our time, and it is not going to be resolved anytime soon.

In fact, over the last few months “supply chain” has quickly become the new trending topic that everyone is talking about. However, most B2B companies have been dealing with supply chain woes for almost two years now. And with no end in sight, they are feeling the pressure to get even more strategic with how they approach supply chain disruptions.

So, how should you handle today’s ongoing supply chain disruptions… and tomorrow’s?

“The ability to withstand unpredictable threat or change and then to emerge stronger.”

This is how the team at McKinsey & Company defines resilience in their recently published an article on what they call The Resilience Imperative. They elaborate further that resilience is going to be more important in the coming decade than ever before when they explain, “Catastrophic events will grow more frequent but less predictable. They will unfold faster but in more varied ways. Disruption is becoming more frequent and more severe.”

Resilience can be financial, operational, technological, organizational, or reputational in nature but the greatest resiliency comes when an organization can anticipate and respond to threats across all categories to dynamically adapt as needed. Obviously, this kind of resiliency does not just fall into place – it is the result of careful planning to develop a revenue resiliency toolkit.

The term “Revenue Operations” is soaring in popularity these days. In fact, Chief Revenue Officer, VP of Revenue Operations, and Director of Revenue Operations are among the fastest growing job titles right now on LinkedIn.

But what is Revenue Operations?

Does your business need it?

And, if you do, how do you establish a Revenue Operations framework?

Revenue Operations (or RevOps for short) is an approach that aims to align sales, marketing, and customer service teams to give them the tools and resources needed to drive predictable revenue. As Bhaskar Roy explains in an article on the rise of Revenue Operations, “RevOps treats revenue not as a fortunate outcome of a quality product, but like a mirror of the supply chain — a pipeline that needs to be powered by optimized business processes.”

“Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it.” – William Durant

The role of the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) is experiencing unprecedented demand right now. Resources on why a CRO is important are gaining traction, and CRO job postings are increasing. So, why are so many companies looking to hire a CRO for the first time?

Over the past last year, the B2B space has likely made about ten years' worth of digital adoption progress. CEOs are still trying to do it all themselves, but with advancement happening faster than ever before, they can no longer keep up, making CROs critical in a post-pandemic world.

No industry has been spared by the disruptive effect of this global pandemic. Some B2B organizations have been negatively affected by supply chain disruptions, stifled sales models, and shifting buying patterns. Others have seen exponential growth due to the emergence of new markets, shifted buying patterns, and grappled with scale-up operations. But businesses experiencing a boom are not in much better shape right now because they are also managing unprecedented revenue challenges.

The pandemic has not created a need for a CRO; it has accelerated the need.

Did you notice the traditional year-end business predictions for 2021 never happened at the end of 2020? This seasonal staple was thrown out the window, like many of our routine practices last year.

Everyone seemed more focused on making it through the year than trying to anticipate what might be coming next. (With everything that January threw at us, perhaps that was a wise decision!)

However, now that we are firmly into 2021, it seems a little safer to look forward. With that comes an increased focus on tackling difficult leadership challenges to move organizations forward.

To succeed in 2021, business leaders must steer teams away from an unhealthy focus on the past, reconcile employee desires with business needs, establish new revenue models, acquire new customers using different methods, and amend strategic planning initiatives.

2020 saw the biggest shift in B2B buying, selling, and marketing in recent history. What was originally speculated to be a temporary pivot ended up being a cataclysmic shift in how revenue is generated in B2B organizations. The trends and strategies that emerged have permanently altered the future of B2B buying.

The biggest change to the B2B landscape over the last year has been the move to digital selling strategies. Digital is now the preferred contact and buying method for B2B buyers to do research, order products, and schedule service. And like many of the changes we have seen arise in 2020, the digital trend does not appear to be going anywhere any time soon. In fact, 80% of B2B buyers want to stick with digital interactions (remote interactions and digital self-serve) in 2021 and beyond.