Chicago's B2B Advantage
Chicago has become one of the strongest B2B technology ecosystems in the country. With companies like G2, Sprout Social, ActiveCampaign, and Relativity calling the city home — plus a dense concentration of enterprise buyers in financial services, healthcare, and manufacturing — the city creates a unique environment for B2B marketing and revenue operations.
But here's what I've observed working with Chicago B2B companies: most are still operating with disconnected marketing, sales, and customer success teams — each with their own tools, their own data, and their own definition of success.
That's the problem revenue operations solves.
What Revenue Operations Actually Means
Revenue operations (RevOps) is the alignment of marketing, sales, and customer success around shared data, shared processes, and shared revenue goals. It's not a new department — it's a new operating model.
In practice, RevOps means:
- **One source of truth**: A single CRM where marketing, sales, and customer success all see the same customer data
- **Unified lifecycle**: Clear definitions of what an MQL, SQL, opportunity, and customer look like — agreed upon by all teams
- **Shared attribution**: Understanding which marketing activities influence which deals, from first touch through renewal
- **Process alignment**: Lead handoff, deal support, and customer expansion workflows that don't have gaps between teams
What RevOps Looks Like at Different Company Stages
Series A / Seed (5-20 people):
At this stage, RevOps is usually one person (often the first marketing hire) who builds the CRM foundation. When I was at PatientIQ, I was effectively the entire RevOps function — setting up HubSpot, defining lifecycle stages, building lead scoring, and creating the reporting that showed $6M in ARR contribution.
The priorities at this stage:
- Clean CRM setup with proper lifecycle stages
- Basic lead scoring (start simple, iterate with data)
- Attribution tracking from day one
- Weekly pipeline meetings between marketing and sales
Growth stage (20-100 people):
This is where RevOps becomes a dedicated function. Marketing and sales have separate goals but shared pipeline. The technology stack gets more complex: CRM, marketing automation, sales engagement, intent data, analytics.
The priorities shift to:
- Multi-touch attribution modeling
- Automated lead routing and SLA enforcement
- Territory management and account assignment
- Revenue forecasting with marketing input
- Tech stack consolidation (most companies have too many tools by this stage)
At AASM, this looked like consolidating 3 legacy systems into one HubSpot instance — giving the entire organization a single view of their 13,000+ members across marketing, events, education, and e-commerce.
Scale stage (100+ people):
RevOps at scale is about governance, efficiency, and data quality at volume. Custom objects, complex routing rules, multi-product pipelines, and cross-functional reporting become critical.
The priorities:
- Data governance policies and quality monitoring
- Complex lead scoring with ML inputs
- Cross-functional dashboards for executive visibility
- Process documentation and change management
- Tech stack vendor management and rationalization
Building RevOps: A Practical Framework
Step 1: Audit Your Current State
Before building anything, document what exists:
- What tools does each team use?
- Where does customer data live? (Usually: everywhere)
- What are the current handoff points between teams?
- Where do leads fall through the cracks?
- What reporting exists, and does anyone trust it?
Step 2: Define Your Revenue Lifecycle
Get marketing, sales, and customer success in a room and agree on definitions:
- What qualifies as a marketing qualified lead (MQL)?
- When does a lead become sales qualified (SQL)?
- What's the handoff process? What SLA applies?
- When does a deal become an opportunity?
- How do you measure customer expansion and retention?
This step alone — getting everyone to agree on definitions — solves 50% of alignment problems.
Step 3: Build the Data Foundation
Your CRM should be the single source of truth. This means:
- One CRM for all customer-facing teams
- Standardized data entry processes
- Automated enrichment and deduplication
- Clear ownership for data quality
Step 4: Implement Attribution
You can't improve what you can't measure. Build attribution before you build campaigns:
- UTM conventions documented and enforced
- First-touch and multi-touch models running in parallel
- Campaign influence tracking for enterprise deal cycles
- Dashboard visibility for marketing and sales leadership
Step 5: Iterate with Data
RevOps isn't a one-time project. It's an ongoing optimization process:
- Monthly review of lead scoring accuracy (are high-scoring leads actually converting?)
- Quarterly review of lifecycle definitions (are MQL criteria still relevant?)
- Ongoing tech stack evaluation (are you using what you're paying for?)
Why This Matters for Chicago Companies
Chicago's B2B ecosystem has a specific advantage: proximity to enterprise buyers. Companies in financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, and professional services are all here — and they all have complex buying processes that benefit from RevOps.
But proximity only matters if your go-to-market engine can capitalize on it. Revenue operations is what turns a great market position into pipeline.
Building revenue operations at your Chicago B2B company? I've built the RevOps foundation at 4 companies — from Series A startups to 13,000-member enterprises. [Let's talk about what it would look like for your team](/contact). Learn more about my [marketing operations services](/services/marketing-operations).