Growth Hub is now Clandon. Read about our name change.
Talk to us

Comparison

Deal Operations vs RevOps

RevOps aligns the systems, data and process across marketing, sales and customer success in a business that sells a product repeatedly. Deal Operations supports the administration around individual transactions in a firm that advises on deals. They use similar language and solve different problems, and hiring for one when you need the other is an expensive mistake.

The question

The confusion is understandable. Both are operational disciplines, both own CRM data, both produce pipeline reporting. The difference is what the pipeline represents.

In a revenue business, the pipeline is a repeating motion across many similar opportunities, and the job is to make that motion efficient. In an advisory firm, each mandate is substantially unique, runs for months, and involves a different set of counterparties. There is far less to optimise and far more to administer.

Option A: RevOps

An operational function aligning revenue-generating teams around shared systems, data and process.

Works when

  • The business sells a repeatable product or service at volume
  • Marketing, sales and customer success need to hand off between each other cleanly
  • Conversion rates, cycle times and funnel efficiency are meaningful measures
  • Systems architecture and automation across the revenue stack is a real problem
  • Forecasting depends on modelling patterns across many similar deals

Costs you

  • It is the wrong shape for bespoke, long-running mandates
  • Optimising a funnel is meaningless where every deal has a different path
  • It tends to be a systems and analysis role, not an execution one, so the administration still lands on someone else

Option B: Deal Operations

Support for the administration that a live deal process generates.

Works when

  • Each mandate is bespoke and runs over months
  • The volume of records, files, trackers and mapping is the actual problem
  • Senior people are doing administration because it has to be done by someone
  • Accuracy and currency matter more than conversion rate optimisation
  • The requirement is execution capacity rather than analysis

Costs you

  • It does not redesign your systems or your revenue architecture
  • It does not optimise a funnel, because in advisory there is rarely a funnel to optimise
  • It is capacity, so it scales with the work rather than removing it

How to decide


Three questions:

  1. Is every deal different, or is every deal similar?
    Similar points to RevOps. Different points to Deal Operations.
  2. Is the problem that the motion is inefficient, or that the admin is unmanaged?
    Inefficiency is a design problem. Unmanaged admin is a capacity problem.
  3. Would a better system fix it, or does somebody need to do the work?
    Both answers are legitimate, and they lead to different hires.

Where we would say hire instead

If the problem is genuinely architectural, that the systems do not talk to each other, that the data model is wrong, or that nobody owns how the revenue stack fits together, hire for it. That is a design job requiring someone inside the business with the authority to change things, and it is not what we provide.

The same applies where you want the capability permanently in house. We staff the execution underneath a design; we do not replace the person who owns the design.

Related resources

What Is Deal Operations?

The administration that sits behind a live deal process, and who normally ends up doing it.

Operations Support vs Hiring Internally

Cost, speed, cover and control, and the circumstances in which hiring directly is the better answer.

What Is Pipeline Maintenance?

Keeping a pipeline current enough that the reporting off it can be trusted.

Not sure which function you actually need?

Talk to us