Holistic Revenue Part 3: How Revenue Engines Scale Revenue

There’s a difference between setting your revenue up for scale and actually following through on the plan to create something substantial. Think about your revenue engine from the perspective of a vehicle — the engine does most of the difficult work, but the car still needs a driver.

In the first two parts of this series, we discussed how the old way of solving your revenue problem doesn’t work before introducing all the aspects that go into building the revenue engine and an unshakeable revenue foundation.

Now comes the fun part — capitalizing on your initial investments and seeing an upward trajectory in your revenue growth. A well-oiled revenue engine impacts the buyer positively at all points of their journey with your company, from the first touchpoint all the way through renewal or offboarding. This final piece of the series will demonstrate exactly how the revenue engine works together for specific customers.

The Modern Buyer’s Journey

To outline the benefits that an aligned revenue ecosystem can have on your company, we’ll briefly walk through the entirety of a buyer’s journey. Remember, this process has changed significantly in recent years. 

Rather than buyers waiting to be contacted by your sales team, they actively find you. This is crucial to keep in mind as we walk through the journey and investigate how the revenue engine answers a question on the mind of every buyer: What makes your company the best solution for my problems?

To present yourself as the clear and obvious answer to that question, let’s see how the revenue engine impacts each stage of the funnel.

Top-of-Funnel

Before any marketing or sales efforts can begin, you need to understand who your audience is, how they interact with your business, and how you want to engage with them. This will help you get people into the funnel so you can strategically encourage them to work their way through the funnel.

Crafting ideal client profiles (ICPs) and buyer personas are the only way to do this effectively. While you might think target audiences, ICPs, and buyer personas are the same thing, there are distinct differences between the three:

• Target Audience: a group of people or businesses at which your product or service is aimed.

• ICPs: the most valuable persons or businesses within your target audience who are most likely to purchase from you.
• Buyer Personas: the specific buyers within your target audience and ICP.

Well-drafted buyer personas go beyond general target audiences; they show individual buyers that you understand their everyday pain points and also present your product or service as the solution to those problems.

Top-of-funnel marketing efforts should combine short- and long-term goals to both get in front of your buyer quickly (paid digital) and develop long-standing infrastructure (SEO and content marketing). If done correctly, these marketing efforts will intrigue a prospect enough to fill out a lead capture form which then directs the buyer through the funnel.

This is where automation plays such a valuable role. If your tech stack is still outdated and processes are not automated, your lead capture process involves internal team members monitoring each individual lead, manually adding them to a leads list, drafting welcome emails, and manually communicating with them throughout the process.

Is it doable? Yes. Is it efficient? Not at all. RevOps and automation solve these problems by updating leads lists and automatically communicating with prospects to save you time and decrease the potential for costly mistakes.

Middle-of-Funnel

With a prospect now into the funnel, it’s time to engage with them to prove how much you value and understand them. Because modern buyers prefer to educate themselves rather than listen to a sales pitch, it’s vital to deliver engaging content that they can actually use to their benefit. 

Thoughtful content marketing efforts can include anything from emails with downloadable checklists that solve their biggest problems, to video series that outline how your company understands the struggles they face every day, to engaging newsletters that provide information and entertainment. 

Whatever your content marketing and SEO strategy are, it’s crucial to remember that the practice has developed far beyond blogging and keyword stuffing. You have to create engaging content in various mediums that are directed at specific buyers. If not, a prospect who perfectly fits your ICP may take their business elsewhere.

The middle of the funnel is where we start to see the handoff between marketing and sales teams. Collaboration at this point in the funnel is crucial to set your sales team up for success when it’s time to engage with the buyer directly.

Bottom-of-Funnel

Automated processes and successful inbound marketing campaigns have directed the buyer all the way down to the bottom of the funnel; now it’s time for the sales team to close the deal.

Because you invested in every component of the revenue engine at the beginning, you can take comfort in the fact that your sales process is polished, your handbooks are finalized, and your reps are trained to engage with your unique buyers. Combined with ongoing customer satisfaction, this is the crucial last step to scaling revenue.

You’ll notice that the steps become shorter and shorter as you make your way through the funnel. The revenue engine is intentionally designed that way to make the sales process as simple and successful as possible by investing in the infrastructure from the get-go.

Automation, technology, and marketing all combine to create a prospect who is ready to engage with a sales rep and convert. Without inbound marketing, that person never would have entered the funnel; without automation, they would have struggled to make it through the funnel; and without sales, the deal cannot be won.

Build Your Revenue Engine

We hope this three-part series helped you understand the House of Revenue® process and why we are so passionate about building revenue engines that set your revenue up for scale. The sales process is constantly evolving, and we are proud to serve CEOs who are looking to stay at the forefront of those changes.

If you have questions about our process or are ready to get started with House of Revenue®, we’d love to talk. Reach out to us today, or follow us on LinkedIn so you never miss important information.