Generating vs. Influencing Revenue
What’s the difference between generating vs. influencing revenue? In its most obvious delineation, marketing influences revenue and sales generates revenue. When building a sales team however, I see more and more use case for sales people that will influence revenue without generating it themselves.
I was talking with the CRO of one of our largest competitors and we were swapping notes on team structure. He shared that he breaks down his team by those that generate the revenue and those that influence or ‘unlock’ revenue. I thought that was really interesting and sent me down the path of evaluating which components of our business have which effect.
Influencing Revenue:
Executive leaders with industry and investor relationships are at the top of revenue influencers. A good sales leader and executive team should influence revenue more than generate it. That said, leaders also generate as I like to think of this as a mama-bird effect where the mama bird teaches baby bird to hunt and makes the initial kills to show baby bird how to fend for themselves.
A partnerships or channel leader influences revenue. The role of the channel is to find amplifiers that generate revenue. A channel or partnership person who builds the channel program, finds new resellers, finds strategic partners, onboards those resellers & partners and enables those resellers is influencing revenue.
Our policy team influences revenue. By ensuring Xeal is on approved vendor lists, compliant with government requirements and getting into new grant & rebate programs, our policy efforts influence our revenue.
Through the conversation with my peer, he has a utility leader who influences revenue at the utility program level and ensuring that their company is the first call for EV charging when a customer of the utility asks about it. Once that call comes in, a revenue generator is introduced to the discussion to negotiate and close the opportunity with the end customer.
Our marketing team through centralized prospecting, advertising, trade shows and brand building influence and unlock revenue. With a strong presence at an industry trade show, you’re building your brand that ossifies your position in the market and in the brain of our customer - thus stimulating demand for our sales team to capture.
Generating Revenue:
Our sales team who spends all day working on deals with customers and our resellers is therefore generating the revenue created by the influencers. Through their connections with customers and partners they are doing demos, negotiating contracts and signing purchase orders. Their understanding and capture of budget from our customer is the definition of generating revenue. In an ideal structure, the work of the influencer is feeding into the funnel of the revenue generators.
In the channel, our resellers are revenue generators who are working with their end customers and doing the same role as a sales person. A distribution sales rep is also a revenue generator.
The revenue generators are taking the information of policy, market positioning, PR and more to show value to their customer and generate revenue from those interactions. Revenue generation can be as simple as taking an order or as complex as working on a sizable, year long, strategic portfolio rollout engagement. The spectrum is wide but the best revenue generators expand the scope and aperture of a customers understanding and desires.
As we grow:
At our stage of the business we are always looking for ways to generate more revenue in an exponential manner rather than through linear progression. While our sales team is going to continue to grow revenue through new and existing accounts, the biggest unlocks tend to be new areas where we can influence revenue at an even faster clip while letting the revenue generators take advantage and capitalize on the influence.