In marketing and business, there is perhaps no hotter term than RevOps; in education and AI, there is probably no topic being debated more than ChatGPT. Sounds like a great mash up opportunity!
There are plenty of blogs (cough cough) and companies which purport to have the correct or “best” definition for RevOps all figured out. Is it alignment? Is it a methodology? There are many opinions and vast areas of disagreement.
But that’s not what this blog is about. The goal of this exercise is to see how ChatGPT chooses to define RevOps given several different prompts. If ChatGPT is ultimately on its way to becoming the new Google, then it’s important to know how reliable it is when defining this notoriously tricky term.
Ok, let’s live out every 10 year old’s fantasy from the 1950’s and talk to a bot.
Let’s start with the basics. No tricks, no fancy wording, no asking ChatGPT to write a haiku.
ChatGPT definitely associates RevOps with the breaking down of silos (”cross-functional approach”), bringing together sales, marketing, and customer success (also mentions “finance” and “operations” the second time), and the idea of streamlining processes as they are all mentioned in both answers.
Still just asking for a simple definition, but let’s see if mentioning “best” changes anything.
No real difference from the “What is RevOps” prompt results. I’m actually quite glad this is the case because it means ChatGPT was, in its own “mind”, putting its best definition forward in the first prompt without being explicitly asked to do so.
Will ChatGPT differentiate between “summarize the concept” and “definition”? Bonus test: does saying “please” get us anything special?
The overall definition provided doesn’t really change with this prompt, but you do get a slightly more detailed description. It’s worth noting that asking ChatGPT to summarize the concept is the only prompt of the three above that produces answers mentioning “scalability” and “go-to-market”, two key elements of RevOps that were left off of the previous results.
It seems that ChatGPT gives a fairly consistent definition of RevOps revolving around alignment of sales, marketing, and customer success leading to a streamlined process and maximum revenue generation. This is in alignment (pun intended) with many popular definitions on various websites.
Since most people will give simple prompts when asking for definitions, this small experiment shows it may be worth rephrasing to “summarize” to get a more detailed response.
In popular parlance, “RevOps” is simply the shortened form of “revenue operations”, let’s see if ChatGPT agrees.
Oh my ChatGPT, what have you done? The first result states they are “essentially the same”, while the second says, “they are not the same thing.”
ChatGPT identifies the distinction between the two mostly in terms of specificity. The terms are related, but RevOps is a specific approach to revenue operations. Interesting, and certainly out of step with what most people believe.
As a side note, I regenerated the response about 10 times after this and got a mixture of about 60/40, with 40% of the time ChatGPT claiming the two were different.
Matt Bolian hates this approach, as he believes a desired outcome is not a definition. Will ChatGPT agree?
ChatGPT wholeheartedly agrees with defining RevOps by its endstate, or desired outcome, because it helps to align initiatives and the idea of working toward a common goal.
Matt is also a big fan of using “science” in a RevOps definition, something which ChatGPT seems to want no part of, at least for now.
Every company likes using their own, special definition. What will ChatGPT make of all this?
Pretty consistent answer: it’s a new term, therefore the definitions are still evolving and are often dependent upon a company’s perspective.
As far as why companies keep putting out different definitions instead of just borrowing from others, I’m not sure if ChatGPT is capable of understanding that if a company came up with a definition and it was widely accepted, that there may be some financial residuals for them.
This term didn’t come up earlier, so let’s see.
ChatGPT was more nuanced with its first answer, but seems to believe “no”, RevOps is not a methodology.
Let’s take a previous definition of RevOps favored by ChatGPT and see if it chooses to expand on it.
Hard no from ChatGPT. Although it always mentions alignment of these three areas in its answers, it is adamant that RevOps goes beyond this simplification.
This is sort of the opposite of asking for a definition. This is basically inquiring what RevOps is not.
It’s interesting to see ChatGPT use “Revenue Operations (RevOps)” in both responses. In an earlier prompt, ChatGPT suggested that the two were not the same, but it has no problem using them to mean the same thing here.
Besides that, though, ChatGPT identifies “a narrow focus”, an overemphasis on technology, and an over-simplification of the term as problems with many definitions. It also mentions lack of standardization, but that’s not really a flaw in the definition itself, but rather an industry problem.
Let’s see if ChatGPT feels like predicting the future.
Side note: if you ask it to “predict the future” on a certain topic, it will say it’s not capable of doing so, but then take a crack at it anyway.
ChatGPT is confident that although the definition will probably change overtime, the idea of alignment will remain constant. It suggests that pricing strategy and data analysis may become a bigger part of the equation later on. The second result predicts a more standardized definition in the future. (fingers crossed)
Some of ChatGPT’s best answers can result from unconventional prompting. Let’s see how much of a barebones result this yields.
Real world examples are the best. Ten year old me would totally be a RevOps master after this. It’s interesting to see that ChatGPT never leaves out the concept of alignment when defining RevOps, even for kids.
I want big words ChatGPT, and lots of them.
Whereas asking ChatGPT to describe RevOps “like I’m 10” yielded a simpler RevOps definition than asking it "What is RevOps?", asking for an MBA level definition did not produce a comparatively more intricate one when compared to the original prompt. It essentially gives out the same answer for when you ask for a straight up RevOps meaning.
I want another real world example, like the lemonade stand one, but just at a higher level.
I tried this prompt about 10 times, and each time yielded this same response (albeit with slightly different wording). ChatGPT is at least committed to the idea of this being THE most creative way possible to define RevOps.
One more attempt at some real world examples...
That’s game, set, and match for my favorite answers. Not only does ChatGPT give a definition, but then uses that definition in action. Just saying that RevOps aligns sales, marketing, and customer success is quite different from showing what that means in the context of a buyer’s journey. ChatGPT, you get a gold star.
Ok, last one.
Observation #1: This sounds like content from Robert Jones!
Observation #2: Still some inconsistency with regards to ChatGPT’s opinion of the relationship between RevOps and revenue operations.
Observation #3: Focuses on alignment, streamlining of processes, and tools. If you can wade through the pirate talk, both answers produce pretty solid definitions.
If you had no idea what RevOps was, ChatGPT would give you an understanding of the term with just the basic “what is RevOps” prompt. While it can be slightly inconsistent with some of its positions (e.g. RevOps and revenue operations are/aren’t the same thing), overall it nails the ideas of alignment and streamlining processes and goals.
Using more creative prompts such as “define RevOps for a 10 year old” and “use a real world example to define RevOps” are probably the most helpful prompts for someone who is brand new to the term, or marketing in general.
Takeaway: ChatGPT demonstrates a depth of knowledge regarding RevOps and defines the term well in line with what Google search results would yield.
Bonus takeaway: Fun prompts = fun answers; mundane prompts = mundane answers.