Revenue Management Software: What Buyers Need to Know

One of the biggest obstacles to increasing revenue is the lack of actionable, centralized data. It’s likely that you have piles of data stored in different silos, waiting for analysis. However, without revenue management software, this data is essentially useless. For data to be valuable to your company, it needs to drive action.

This is where revenue management software plays a crucial role. The right revenue management software automatically gathers data from all sales activities and provides actionable insights that make a real impact. With this software, revenue professionals will no longer struggle with disorganized data.

If you’re worried about adding yet another tool to your revenue operations toolkit, we don’t blame you. Our revenue management software is a Salesforce-native platform, so all data is automatically captured directly in your CRM. You’ll get the benefits of complete revenue management without the hassle of implementing a foreign platform.

What is Revenue Management Software?

Revenue management software automatically combines data from sales, marketing, product, and customer success to optimize various strategies and tactics. With this new data, all teams can align to form a single cohesive buyer journey, maximizing effectiveness and increasing ROI.

A key function of revenue management software is using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze this data, identifying trends and metrics that can be used to drive more revenue. Revenue forecasting also plays a role in revenue management by predicting which contact is the most likely to respond, through what channel, and when.

Here are some of the types of data collected by revenue management software:

• Account engagement scores
• Sequence engagement rates
• Incomplete sequences
• Content downloads
• Site visits and interactions
• Email opens and clicks
• Opportunity activity volume
• Opportunity close rates
• Conversation analysis for web meetings and voice calls, including keyword usage, overtalk, interruption rate, conversation length, and more
• Incoming and outgoing phone calls, answer rates, callbacks and messages left
• Predictive analytics and forecasting
• Account intent scores
• Deal progression
• Rep adherence to sales playbooks

The Complete RevOps Platform for Revenue Management

Revenue.io is the complete revenue management software that allows you to optimize your revenue operations, analyze what works best, and scale your top performers. It’s the only RevOps platform that guides reps in critical sales moments.

The Revenue.io platform automatically captures all activities, including calls, emails, and more, directly in Salesforce, so you never have to search for the data you’re looking for. Revenue.io then offers dynamic sales forecasts based on this aggregated data. Our platform allows for seamless revenue management that enables businesses to drive predictable growth.

5 Components of the Ideal Revenue Management Software

The market is flooded with various solutions claiming to be revenue management software, but few actually meet the criteria. When searching for the ideal revenue management solution, buyers should keep the following features in mind:

Accurate sales forecasting

Sales forecasting enables companies to predict pipeline and overall growth. Revenue management software utilizes buyer engagement data to provide accurate sales forecasting and conversation intelligence to assess how marketing, sales and customer success performance impact revenue.

One of the primary purposes of sales forecasting software is to reveal which deals are most likely to close. This allows teams to prioritize the most winnable opportunities to drive more revenue.

In providing accurate sales forecasting, revenue management solutions can help companies answer the following questions:\

• How much revenue should we expect this quarter?
• How did actual sales compare to expected sales?
• What stopped us from reaching our sales goals?
• Which deals should we focus on right now because they are the most likely to close?

Data-driven pipeline insights

Clean data is the very essence of revenue management. That’s why it’s vital to select a revenue management solution that automatically captures all relevant data, preferably within a native CRM.

Revenue management software takes this data and turns it into pipeline insights that serve as a single source of truth across your various teams. These insights reveal which opportunities should be focused on. This enables your organization to become entirely data-driven rather than simply collecting data for data’s sake.

Sales automation

A sales sequence is a scheduled series of automated sales touchpoints that include phone calls, emails, SMS messages, social messages, and other tasks delivered over a particular period of time at a pre-defined interval. Revenue management software prescribes sales sequences that are most likely to succeed based on the data.

The goal of these sales sequences is to generate conversations with qualified prospects and set more meetings. With revenue management software, reps can easily deliver proven messaging and content that resonates with buyers across their journey. Sales engagement is more effective when it’s driven by data.

Real-time conversation intelligence

Most reps don’t have enough time to sift through data and try to identify trends they can use to close more deals. Revenue management software that includes real-time conversation intelligence eliminates the need for reps to search for data on their own. Instead, data-driven insights are delivered directly to them in real-time.

For example, let’s say your revenue management solution has identified the most effective way to respond to a certain objection. Rather than simply hoping reps will remember this information on calls, real-time conversation intelligence will identify when that objection is surfaced by the prospect on a live call and automatically provide a pop-up that shows how to overcome that specific objection successfully.

Multichannel outreach

Winning more deals requires making the most of every channel. Simply calling prospects over and over again probably won’t be enough. Revenue management software provides reps with the next best action so they don’t have to wonder who to reach out to, how to reach out or what to say.

Multichannel outreach is absolutely critical for implementing a successful account-based sales (ABS) campaign. Revenue management software can ensure predictable sales cadences that promote alignment between various teams and keep reps focused on the actions that drive more pipeline.

Key Revenue Management Metrics to Track

Once you’ve selected the revenue management software that works best for your company, it’s time to decide which key performance indicators (KPIs) to keep track of. Focusing on the right metrics will reveal whether your revenue intelligence platform is working effectively and which areas need improvement.

Consider taking these metrics into consideration when assessing your revenue management software:

Deal size

What’s your average deal size before and after implementing revenue management software? An effective revenue management solution should be enabling your team to close larger deals. If your deal size is staying the same or getting smaller, coach your reps to focus on the highest impact activities.

Deal velocity

How fast can your team take a deal from opportunity to close? Your revenue management software should accelerate your sales cycle. Keep in mind that if you move upmarket, you will likely face longer sales cycles as an unavoidable consequence.

Upsell campaigns

How many customers are you upselling on a quarterly basis? Revenue management software should provide your customer success team with the required data (including Voice of Customer software) to guide powerful upsell and cross-sell campaigns. Don’t limit revenue management to your sales, marketing and revenue operations teams.

Win rates

Are your win rates accurate? The sales forecasting feature of revenue management software calculates a win rate that reveals how likely a deal is to close. Comparing this to your actual rate of closed-won deals to total number of deals in your pipeline offers insight into the accuracy of your win rates. If they don’t seem accurate, make sure your reps are paying attention to the win rate of each deal and focusing on the most winnable deals.

ARR

Is your annual recurring revenue (ARR) increasing? For many subscription-based companies, ARR is a key metric that points to success. Revenue management software should have a positive impact on ARR and other revenue-focused metrics.

If you’re looking for the ideal revenue management software, our team would be happy to show you how Revenue.io can optimize your revenue processes. Book a demo here.