Deloitte’s Zachary Faithful on fuelling B2B sales with revenue operations

In summer 2024, Deloitte distributed a market survey across 650 B2B sales executives in 13 different industries, with the intent on capturing what their challenges were and how they're thinking about their go to market strategies.

I was recently lucky enough to be joined by Zachary Faithful, Senior Manager, Sales Performance Management, Deloitte, for a conversation based around that research. 

Below is a summary of that conversation.

Why is revenue operations so important today?

RevOps is the operating system that orchestrates the end-to-end customer experience. It aligns sales, marketing, customer success, and, increasingly, finance to drive revenue growth and operational efficiency across the entire revenue lifecycle.

But today, revenue leaders are being asked to stoke growth with fewer resources, and amid developing pressures. The top pain points seen in Deloitte’s data included:

• Adapting to new digital channels and strategic markets
• Attracting and retaining sales talent (sales-enablement gaps)
• Data-driven planning—capacity, territory design, equitable quotas
• Measuring pipeline and forecast accuracy across functions

Layer on existing problems like data-quality issues, disconnected tech stacks, and segmentation mismatches, and it’s overwhelming. Organizations with established RevOps functions consistently outperformed, reporting higher quota attainment and lower rep attrition.

But companies with mature revenue operations functions were 1.4× more likely to exceed revenue goals by 10% or more.
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They rated themselves far more effective at:

• Learning & enablement (47% vs 31 %)
• Data management (47% vs 31%)
• Lead management (44% vs 31 %)
• Performance & planning (53% vs 25%)

The research also showed that ‘aligned’ functions perform better and therefore earn more investment. Firms with robust RevOps were:

• 1.4× more likely to launch new channels
• 1.9× more likely to invest in new tools
• 2.2× more likely to launch new products/services
• 1.4× more likely to run formal talent-upskilling programs

So the benefits are clear - but how do you achieve them?

What sets the best firms apart?

First, planning needs to be more dynamic - not just annual. We’re seeing quarterly or even monthly adjustments to quotas and territories. Annual planning sets the foundation, but firms must pivot mid-year. 

According to the Deloitte, best-in-class teams:

1. Use real-time analytics post-planning
2. Keep processes flexible and workflows adaptable
3. Maintain continuous feedback loops
4. Enforce rigorous cross-functional communication when making in-year changes

Revenue operations is also taking a bigger role in decision-making. It increasingly connects with finance and HR through integrated-business-planning (IBP) tools like Pigment. Bridging sales forecasts with finance budgets and HR head-count planning prevents disconnects like finance rejecting a sales hiring request that’s critical for revenue.

To support this decision-making role, scenario modeling should be a focus for every revenue operations team today. There are always a thousand different strategies you can pursue, but scenario modeling is the way you can evaluate each of them and make more informed decisions.

Next steps

Read Deloitte’s research here.

Or, watch the full webinar on demand here.