Too many Revenue Operations (RevOps) teams get stuck in tactical firefighting, buried in reporting requests, CRM admin work, and low-leverage tasks. But the best RevOps leaders operate differently.
In this live panel, we sat down with three senior RevOps executives who’ve successfully elevated their teams to become strategic advisors at their companies. Whether you’re a hands-on ops manager or a VP building a function, this conversation is packed with frameworks, tips, and hard-earned lessons to help you get out of the weeds and earn your seat at the table.
Featured Panelists:
Jeff Ignacio, GTM Ops Lead at Keystone AI & Founder of RevOps Impact
Olga Traskova, Head of RevOps at Birdeye
Lonny Sternberg, VP of Revenue Operations at Veriforce
Key Topics We Cover:
– What it actually means to be a trusted advisor in RevOps
– How to position your function as strategic (not just tactical support)
– Tactics for driving alignment across sales, marketing, and CS
– How to communicate your wins and elevate the RevOps brand internally
– Frameworks for execution: operating rhythms, planning cycles, KPIs, and more
– Balancing short-term requests with long-term value
– Building the soft skills RevOps leaders need to succeed
– Career advice for moving from RevOps practitioner to executive leader
Whether you’re stuck in the CRM admin trap or looking to level up your strategic influence, this session will help you think bigger, plan smarter, and drive impact across the business.
Transcript:
Hey, Mike. We’re just letting people trickle in here.
We’ve got a few more everybody. Thanks for joining. Hope everyone caught their breath after the sprint of quarter end, although I know you all probably saw a million things to do.
We wait for more people to hop in. I’m gonna go ahead and put up a quick poll.
We just put that up. Do me a favor and fill out that poll to help guide the panel, we wanna just get a sense of your biggest rev ops challenges today, how strateg you feel in the role. The poll question should be on your screen. There’s also a pull button at the bottom right of your toolbar. We’re asking about how Rev Ops has perceived your company today, your biggest rev ops challenges, average time horizon for the projects you’re working on.
Go ahead and give that a look.
See a few answers coming in. Yeah. Did you guys fill that out? Now that we’ve got quite a few folks in here, just say hello. I’m James, co-founder of AccountAim, joined by my co-host Rucci, who is the co-founder of Maple. Much more important than both of us, we’re joined by our esteemed panelists. Today’s topic is a great one.
We all know the role of rev ops can sometimes feel like a trap getting bogged down in reactive firefighting, low value work, when in reality it should be one of the most strategic role is at a company. These three amazing rev ops leaders have successfully avoided this trap, as you can just tell by their career trajectory.
So we’re gonna ask them how they did it today. We will cover what strategic rev ops even is, how to position Rev Ops as a trusted advisor, how to execute being a strategic partner, and how to self evaluate, if you’re being a trusted advisor and actually showcase your value to the company, which should obviously help with career trajectory.
We’ll end with 15 minutes of q and a. At any point if a question pops into your head, go ahead and post it with, in the chat in the q and a button and we’ll cover it at the end. That’s enough buildup. Let’s, get into it. I’ll close the poll here momentarily. But in the meantime, we can just start with intros.
As I mentioned, I’m the co-founder of AccountAim. We’re a next gen analytics tool built specifically for Rev ops. You’re tired of constantly being in a reactive state. Our data platform helps avoid this. Rucci, do you want to intro yourself and then we can get into the panelists? Yeah, for sure. Thanks everyone for joining.
I’m the co-founder of Maple, which is a modern revenue stack, so an end-to-end solution with your CPQ invoicing, contract management and Dunning, and finance tools, all in a single platform for accounts receivables. So that’s us in a nutshell. And then Jeff, you wanna kick us off from the panelist side?
Name is Jeff Ignacio. I lead go to market operations at Keystone ai, and I also run a revenue operations content business called Rev Ops Impact. All right, Olga, we can go to you next. Sure. My name is Olga. I run revenue operations at company called BirdEye. Oversee marketing, sales, customer success, operations, as well as, go-to market tech stack and analytics.
All right, and last but not least, Lonnie. Hey James. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Lonnie Sternberg, VP of Rev ops at ver, leading the revenue operations function, closely aligned with, go to market, strategy. All right. Thanks all again for joining. I think this will be a good one. We’re going into the panel then, Olga, I’ll start with you.
And if we think about just like the definition of what does even being a trusted advisor mean, like in your experience, what does it mean in your org? What are the outcomes of being a trusted advisor and in the rev ops seat? Yeah, that’s a very good question, James. As you said, ops is still often being misunderstood and confused with, sales operations were being perceived as, CRM admins, data hygienists or people that run reports.
And for me, becoming the trusted advisor means moving beyond just reporting numbers or fixing processes. It’s becoming the strategic partner who. Proactively guides who becomes the voice of reason, who can clearly articulate, as to why and why not. We should make this, decision. And Alberta, I report to CEO.
In the past I used to report to CFOs as well. And if I were to elevate myself on their level and look at, rev ops function from. Their standpoint. Essentially what you know, CEOs and CFOs and CROs are looking for is they’re looking for. Not having problems, and not having problems in major, charters that rev ops oversee.
And I would break it down into forecasting. This is where CEOs and CFOs share common interest, right? Having confidence in the forecasting accuracy, having clear insights into the pipeline, having clear sales process defined, ensuring that sales reps are following the process, which is predictable, right?
Also, the go-to market alignment, right? This is also something that ops function was, created to manage, is to break down, is to break down silos and ensure the seamless coordination and partnership between sales and marketing and customer success. CEOs, CFOs and CROs definitely do not want any finger pointing or operational bottlenecks, right?
So establishing. Clear communications and clear partnerships and cooperation between the go-to market functions. Often meeting with your CMOs, your chief sales officers or customer success officers to establish the frameworks and expectations. And then of course, we need to simplify things.
We need to enhance processes, we need to improve processes, if you were to elevate yourself on the C level, right? They’re looking for scalable processes, right? They’re always looking for the next big thing for the next event, or be that acquisition or merger or IPO. So they want simple, scalable processes.
And this is where we are. This is where we’re helping, we help operate without inefficiencies. Ensuring that no one is, slowed down, via automations and playbooks and workflows, and now with ai. That’s great. You definitely covered the broad scope of rev ops and it’s never ending.
Do you have anything you’d add to that on just what does it mean to be a trusted advisor? I. So I always think of, head of rev ops as the COO to any go-to-market executive, right? And it’s not just one necessary function like a Chief Revenue Officer, but it could be a CMO or a VP of marketing, VP of Cs.
And there’s five traits that I normally see within a high functioning, go to market, CO, right? Revenue operator. One is they are themselves a business owner. They think like a business owner, they expect the outcomes to be that. Second, they are an expert within the go-to-market domain. They don’t have to be an expert within every subdomain, but they can certainly facilitate and identify and find the right answers.
They facilitate decision making, right? Sometimes we make decisions based on very little data. But ideally we move to a place where we are well-informed, and we’ll talk about that later in the in the webinar. I also view ourselves as a pulse setter, so we operate the rhythm of the business.
And then lastly, we’re the get stuff done folks, right? Like the GSDs. The impossible task, I find, revenue operators to have high tenacity for that type of, output. Great with Olga, we covered kind of the scope of being a trusted advisor with Jeff. You covered like the traits. I think that’s a really good combination of the two.
So that’s the definition in a nutshell. Like Lonnie, I’ll turn it to you next. Positioning, rev ops isn’t super well understood by every company. I think everyone here probably knows that, like how should rev ops position itself is more of a strategic function rather than just a tactical, do or as important as that is.
Yeah. That one resonates pretty deeply. I think that, there’s gonna be times where you’re gonna have to be strategic and tactical, and you’re gonna need to be able to blend backwards and forwards between for all different facets, be expertize and in both. I, I think it, it parallels into this concept of.
Are you a supporting function or are you a partnering function? And if you’re able to get that seat at the table, if you will, and really be a partner, you’re looking to be, as Jeff said, an expert. But you’re really understanding all the different stakeholders objectives as well as the business objectives from ladder goals, OKRs, KPIs, et cetera, et cetera.
But I think you’re also the person that raises their hand first and says, Hey, look, if we do this is gonna be the consequence. And to point out, whether it’s disagree or commit or spelling out what, what is going to happen based on the lack of data or with the data that you do have. Because those siloed areas, if they are not siloed, they’re still very verticalized in their thinking.
Very vertical into, look, this is my objective. This is what I need to do. This is the mandate either from the CEO or whoever. So how do you look cross-functionally and how do you have that impact all the way across both horizontally and vertically? I think to that point also knowing because you have that tactician mindset and being biased to action, that you know you’re down in the weeds at times and you understand even at the field level what the impact is going to be and how it’s going to flow all the way through the business.
So I think. It’s trust getting in there and really understanding, Hey, what are you trying to achieve? What are your blockers? Talking to the different groups and being able to call a spade because you’re talking to, first line all the way to the C level and you’re, moving horizontally, vertically through the organization and saying when I talk to so and I know exactly how this is going to impact them.
Although you wanna achieve this goal, those two things are not aligned. And really being that shock caller between the different, organizational leaders. That makes a lot of sense. I’m looking at the pull results from before we kinda kicked off the panel and how has Revs perceived your company?
Four to 3% of folks that is a CRM admin team. What’s your biggest challenge today? Too much reactive firefighting and too many things to do. I think what you said, Lonnie, like I. Is a good recipe for getting through that because if you’re partnering around business outcomes and goals, you’re elevating above CRM admin and you’re hopefully being able to stack rank between all of these things going on at once based on the actual desired outcomes.
Olga, anything you would add around just like positioning the function? I think you covered it a little bit in the first answer, but maybe like tactically if someone was, feeling like they were stuck as, being looked at as a CRM admin, like how they can reframe rev ops to elevate above that.
I agree with everything that Juan said, right? There’s no way to escape being tactical. We need to be tactical. We’re hands-on in every system, so we need to balance it out. What I would say, the skill that we all need to master is the communication, right? And that goes both ways. That is.
First of all, speaking up for your teams, setting up the clear goals, expectations, creating roadmaps and frameworks. And that’s how you move from being reactive to proactive. You set goals for yourself and for your team, and then you clearly communicate on their accomplishments. If we do not become our own champions, our wins will not be recognized.
They will not be known because if everything’s running smoothly and we’re doing our job. No one would notice, right? Because everything just runs smoothly and people would expect, that’s how it does, that’s how it goes, right? We’re, we only get noticed when something is on fire, right? Whether systems are not, cooperating correctly.
I would say mastering communication. Mastering communication. And now in the world of ai, I’ve been obsessing over Jeff’s videos, with AI and him creating SDRs and all kinds of workflows. I think. Now the way to propel yourself and the Rev Ops career ladder is to become this human with ai, to help pretty much with everything that that we do, from pipeline inspection to forecasting to daily workflows, and then looking into, reps daily daily lives, how we can help there as well.
Maybe in 20 years. All a company needs is rev ops. If they can create AI agents for every single thing that Rev Ops touches, that’s basically the whole company. Olga, something you said, caught my attention was just around you have to communicate for yourself, evangelize your own results, because if everything’s going well, no one notices rev ops.
I think that’s a trap. Lot of people fall into Any quick tips on how folks can actually do that Tactically. I’ve been posting on LinkedIn a lot, and it’s been, and it’s been noticed, my, my CEO comments, my, my other c leadership people comment, right? So I’m I’m trying to become this thought leader.
For myself, for my team, for my company representative of what we do, and just putting it out there. A lot of times it’s just getting out of your comfort zone. So there’s that, speaking out to the world and speaking internally. We do have a biweekly meeting here that’s called Rev Ops Projects Update.
I do have, all of the go-to market leaders, on that meeting where we just go through, this is what we’re working on and this is what we have rolled out and this is what we have accomplished. And of course, partnering with your enablement team is crucial because that’s how you deliver the message to the end users.
And every, everything that you, you push life, right? Ensure it’s featured in your company’s newsletter, in your Slack channels, live trainings, team meetings, et cetera. So just over communicate. Helpful. Jeff, moving into execution. So we’ve framed up, I think what being a trusted advisor means, how to think about it, tactically, what does it take to actually be a valuable strategic advisor as a rev ops leader?
What are the actions that kind of lead to this outcome? So I would say a couple of things. One, we translate the overall business objectives and we translate them to initiatives. There are many companies out there who have goal setting frameworks. I believe OKRs are probably the most popular one.
What I find lacking in the OKR framework is the fact that they have to translate it to initiatives. And so if you think about. The V two MOM framework from Benioff, he vision, values, methods, obstacles, measures, very comprehensive framework. And I would think about how do you then take those OKRs and translate them to actual initiatives that the business can take on.
The second is going to be the operating rhythm of the business. The operating rhythm is really about. What’s that feedback loop all throughout the organization, throughout the year, and at what levels and who should be involved? A RACI matrix is a wonderful tool, for identifying that feedback of information.
Also, operating rhythms are a very, I. It’s a double-edged sword, right? Because, there are so many, studies out there that show meetings are wasteful, to productivity. So how do you optimize, your operating rhythms, over and over? Next is your planning cycle. Your planning cycle can be, short term, which is the one year plan.
It could be medium term, which is your three year vision. And then ultimately, where does your business think it’s going for the ultimate long term. And so when you can align your planning cycles to each of those different lenses, you can really think ahead. Next is measurable KPIs. Smart goal frameworks are wonderful.
I would also caution. If you measure everything, you’re probably not managing anything, right? So there are certain KPIs that are, super important and then you want really wanna be that thoughtful around, what are your leading indicators that you measure and you operate with. Next is a user experience.
I call it the frontline experience, right? So rev ops from a systems perspective can be much like a product manager. So when we’re interacting with all of our systems, I wanna be mindful of if I’m an SDR or I’m a sales rep, how many tabs do I have open? I. At any one time to execute my job. If I’m flipping and toggling across three or four tabs, that’s probably a pretty bad sign, that my frontline experience isn’t optimal.
And then lastly, it’s relationships, right? And this is something you’re not really tracking, we build relationship maps at the account plan level and at the opportunity plan level, why can’t we do it, as well to the strength of relationship with our stakeholders internally. So those are a couple of tools that I think would be really interesting to implement.
And I think could make a world of difference if you were to do that’s all really great, Jeff. I think that’s, so much good advice and a pithy answer like to boil that all up into being a trusted advisor, let’s say to CEO or COO. Like how does this all culminate into that? What is the outcome?
I think there’s a lot of fantastic tactics in there, but what does that kind of get, that you can deliver to the C-suite? Ultimately, it is almost like a blanket, like a com, a comforting blanket of the business, right? The train is ar, the trains are going to arrive at the station on time. I know for a fact that we’re doing a master data management play around March or April.
Then we’re gonna start in earnest kicking off conversations around planning in July or August. We’re gonna assign team leads to, to take over certain sub work streams and what, how that’s gonna culminate is gonna roll up towards a couple of deliverables. One, you’re gonna have, your segmentation, your account plans, your territories.
You’re gonna have a marketing strategy with plans, with discretionary budget and investments. You’re gonna have a headcount plan that you have, confidence that you’re bringing in the right roles. To take on the right responsibilities and that you can confidently ramp them so that you are in position to execute the business the following year.
When we think about what does that look like to me, it looks like the trains are running on time. That’s great. And I think that is peace of mind for executives, which is really a synonym for trust. So I think that’s awesome. Lon, anything you add here on this one, on the tactics of being a trusted advisor.
Definitely, I think that, totally agree with what Jeff was saying. I think it’s really eloquently put and like very focused and disciplined approach to how you can, execute on those things using those frameworks. So complimenting that with what Olga was saying earlier on the communication, I think that really taking the theme of this conversation and saying.
Okay, how do I move from that CRM admin to that vp, SVP or even that C-suite? I think it’s the ability to ident number one, identify. So identify where is everybody at meeting in and where they’re at, and communicating that. Then applying those frameworks and tactics similar or exactly what Jeff listed out, and then to Olga’s point, communicating it.
How do you effectively communicate that to the rest of the organization? Because. Different organizations are gonna be at different places no matter what. You can have top line of 20 million, you can have 300 million, you can be a billion dollar organization no matter what. Every organization is gonna be a little bit different.
And even though that they define something in, in an area or a job description as listed or detailed in one way, you get boots on the ground and it’s gonna be different no matter what. So being able to A, have that maturity and. I think it comes somewhat with experience, be able to get into the business and assess it and say, whoa, this is what I’m seeing.
This is what we talked about. This is what you’re saying you want. Now here’s some best practices and some actual tactics and frameworks that I can apply. However, if I apply these are gonna be the outcome. But you’re asking for a different outcome here, and that outcome requires a lot more maturity.
So do we have the maturity? Do we have the readiness, and do we have the awareness? So going and looking at the organizational structure, but every company. It’s interesting once you get inside of the company versus on the outside what it’s gonna take. So being able to apply all three models across the board, I think is really having that lens and that landscape of how you move from X to Y.
Thanks a lot. I that caps it off. Ru I’ll turn it over to you. Sorry for interrupting. Thanks for the intro there. Thanks for all this great topic, around, frameworks, RACI met and all of these sort of key frameworks and reporting and communication mechanisms. Obviously reviewing all these different matrices and re and reporting mechanisms, like it’s easy to just.
Really think of rev ops really as just the reporting and communication function, or at least that taking the monstrosity of your time. So how do you actually get work done right? Like how does Rev Ops transition from being the reporting function to being. Something, some of a function that actually gets stuff done.
To Jeff’s point, the GSTs, right? How do you actually get stuff done? I’d love to get your take on that, Lonnie, I think, charter ethos, not just within your organizational structure, immediate direct reports, but the organizational structure across the ecosystem, and I think roadmap. Mean, do you have a very clear roadmap of what you want to achieve?
And then being able to communicate and explain how that roadmap is aligned with the rest of the organization. Whether you have a chief strategy officer, whether it’s a president, a GM model, it’s a CEO LED model, or even founder led, often, the alignment of these different vertical leaders, or not necessarily, if you put ’em all down on paper, they’re not perfectly aligned and what it takes to get everything done.
There’s a lot that lies in between. So I think if you can take all of that, digest it. Put it into a digestible fashion for others to consume and say, look, this is our ethos. This is our charter, and here’s our roadmap. This is how you can track on time. Then you start to create some automatic buckets by saying this is tactical or reactive, and this is proactive and strategic, and this is work that’s more project based.
That has a clear, timeline associated with it, with measurable outcomes. And then you can ladder that up to the achievements of the company or, whoever you’re reporting to or your stakeholders want to achieve. I think there you’ve now basically gotten on the front of your feet rather than the back, and you’re saying, look, I’ve laid out what we’re doing.
This is how it lands, and now you’re a hundred percent in control of what you can control, which is those outcomes versus the other things around them. Similar, there’s a disconnect because most definitely there will be then you can call it ahead of time, but then when you have to diagnose the root cause of why something failed, you’re able to go back and actually find where something went wrong.
I. I think that’s really how you have to understand and bring it all together. Olga, I love your take on that part, because you certainly have seen the both sides of the coin where, certainly you have to do a great job positioning yourself on LinkedIn and communication, but also there’s, the duck paddling under the water.
How does that work for you? I think setting the right expectations is also the key, right? Goes along with, communicating clearly, articulating, right? Partnering with your go-to market leaders, to what, you guys are saying, understanding their objectives, understanding their pain, right?
Then again, championing for yourselves, so as we go through this whole KR process or goal setting process, this is where you define your focus for the next month or for the next quarter, and you’re setting that expectation on the other side. You understand? That there’s gonna be a lot of firefighting.
There’s a lot of a lot of tactics that your team also needs to handle. So you reserve some time, you reserve 30%, 20% of your team’s time and your time to actually. Tackle the unknown that absolutely is gonna is gonna come up, during that period. So I would say, setting the right expectations and then planning, communicating clearly, having those, frequent syncs with your leadership teams.
Helps with competing priorities that will absolutely come through. So it’s not about just you defining sort of priorities, right? In the spirit of breaking down silos, I want my C leaders to also communicate and talk amongst themselves. If something needs to be moved up the list, something needs to give up and be moved down.
So I want this sort of partnership and conversation established as to how do we prioritize the projects that Ops is working on together. That definitely resonates. It’s also just, very easy to, yourselves as a leader, be really bogged into the tactical, reacting to things being on top of communication and all of that.
Do you see, Jeff, I’d love your take on this. Do you have, a way that. You stop yourself or self evaluate, like whether you’re operating at a strategic level, do you have some way of assessing whether your time is being prioritized accurately? I can tell you what I, currently do and then, things that I wish I did more.
So let’s just do a little bit of both. So one thing that I’ll work with on my team are postmortems, so we’ll always have a project wrapped. Postmortem is extremely important at the project level. It’s also really important at the quarterly level. At the quarterly level, we do it in the form of A-A-Q-B-R.
It’s also tends to dovetail with the board meeting. So the two somewhat tend to be a very stressful time and it’s focused about the business, but not necessarily within the business. So those are some things that I think we can reflect on. The second is the, I like to do this personally is an operating cadence assessment.
So taking a look at o operating cadences and see if attendance has dropped off or if the impact that these operating cadences have had are starting to decrease. And that’s usually I, what I recommend as a shakeup of the operating cadence because sometimes you need to inject some new energy into something that appears old and start to be a little bit rope within the organization.
The third thing is to review the roadmap. So when you look at the roadmap, it’s a living breeding document. Things can go on it, things can go off it, right? So folks think that a roadmap is set in stone at the beginning of the year, but in reality, priorities can change. So you want to be able to make sure that you’re accommodating.
External stimuli that ne necess necessitated change on the roadmap. And then something that I wish I did a little bit more of, which would be a quarterly reflection. And the reflection would be, how am I performing in terms of one being a leader with my team? Are they developing?
In the areas that they want to develop. Do I understand they, where they want to go, to my stakeholders? Am I unblocking some of the obstacles that are preventing them from achieving their goals? And am I anticipating well enough? Where am I still being, fed information to me right? In a reactive fashion?
Those are a couple of ways where I’m looking to wanna be self-critical, identify, am I performing at an optimal level? And some quarters I do great. I can tell you some quarters I feel like, oh man I really am not performing at, a high, at the highest caliber. Let me make sure that for the following quarter, I get right above right ahead of the eight ball.
No, that certainly resonates. I think it’s it’s often an exercise of, self-evaluation and vulnerability to admit mistakes and fix and course correct. So I think that certainly resonates. Olga, I’d love your take on this part where, you know, you, we talked a lot about communication, we talked a lot about, KPIs and measurement.
I’d love your take on. The best practices around actually communicating, those metrics and, lifting up your team, in front of the exec team. That’s, such a good question. Communication for the sake of communication is not helpful and relevant. We need to communicate with context and we need to anchor ourselves to, the revenue goals and to the company goals, right?
And we need to track the metrics that would resonate and would be helpful. Again, depending who you report to your COCO or CFO. I saw a question here in the chat asking about the sort of self-driven reports versus, governed by rev ops. So company level analytics should be absolutely governed by, rev ops or finance.
So the IT teams, those little dashboard that are locked and. We all know what is a definition, right? Of a customer, for example, starts with the data dictionary. What is a RR? What is a CV? What is a customer? What is a contract? What is an opportunity? What is pipeline? Et cetera. So those sort of key definitions should be, governed, and measured by, by, by revenue operations.
In terms of in terms of, metrics, right? It’s also very easy. Go into the rabbit hole of the death by data situation and start tracking pretty much everything on earth and every. Point of conversion. But it starts with your customer journey, right? And the milestones of your customer journey that need to be measured in terms of the volume and pacing to goal and the conversions between the major milestones as well as the revenue metrics, as well as something that, your CEO, your CTO, your CFO would be looking at.
The new logos, the current logos, the retention rate with the average deal size, the sell cycles. So we always anchor ourselves to those metrics. If we are now on a path to increase our average deal size, so now we’re partnering with say marketing and our product team and our finance team to figure out, okay, how do we increase our average deal size?
What. Changes need to be done in CM in terms of the price books or CP Qs or core configurations or trainings, enablements, to achieve that and new work serve as a project as a project team on that. When it comes to, say, for example, deal slipping, I think Jeff mentioned, mutual action plans, right?
Maps, that’s what really helps, staying on top of your pipeline, top of your deals, and sure deals are not slipping or progressing through pipeline. So it depends on what you are after. There are absolutely instruments. There’s, there are playbooks, that, that can address that spot on. I think that certainly, chi like that certainly makes sense.
I would love to just, maybe hop into the q and a that we’ve accumulated. I think, just in the interest of time, I wanna make sure we get to some of these questions. James, do you wanna take over? I can continue. Yeah. Happy to. Thanks Richie. And thanks Olga, Jeff and Lonnie for, a great panel.
I think it was awesome. Just looking at the questions here, so we touched on self-serve and reporting. Eva has a question around communications. We all mentioned communication is key. She agreed, I think we all agree. What strategies do you guys use to solve that mythical. Ever present problem of go to market alignment, sales, marketing, and cs.
Any tactical tips or examples from your business? And I’ll open this up to any of the three of you if you’re feeling inspired.
Yeah, the one, a couple of tactics that I’ve used is really identifying early on who you’re most critical stakeholders are gonna be, and having your one-on-ones or your check-ins with them. And then I think. I touch on this a little bit earlier, but I think having a clear, kind of state of the union deployment in terms of, whether it be a meeting cadence or some type of, visual representation of, where are you at in that roadmap?
What’s been accomplished, what’s being accomplished, and then tying it out really for them. I think that. Individualized as well as a group communication depending on the cadence, whether it be, most companies are gonna have a annual kickoff. It could be have a quarter wrap plus another, a subsequent quarter kickoff as well.
But I think that’s an opportunity to, leverage that group framework and whatever framework’s being put in place for you to report in. And then also putting some of your own spin, to be a little bit forward thinking and gauging, I think the impact on that as well as. The effectiveness is asking.
I like to, double click on what Jeff said on the self-reflection. Am I being asked questions or am I asking the questions? I find that when I’m asking the questions, usually I’m a little bit more in front of the problem when the questions are being asked of me and I feel like I’m playing catch up.
I think that’s a great angle. I think another angle you could take on this is, sale, like the classic problem sales and marketing butting heads over lead definitions are what should, shouldn’t be worked. Any other tactical tips on that front around, similar problems of just like total misalignment, like how you can get that, I heard communication from you Lani and getting ahead of things and part to communication.
Anything else there on that other side of the coin? I would put together a revenue operating model, right? You have two views of it. You have a top down and you have a bottoms up. The bottoms up should be a full funnel breakdown of what happens at the top of funnel within the sales funnel, and then within your customer base.
Each of those should have volume, conversion percentages and cycles around it. Then you need to think about the resources that it takes to accomplish, all of that. Are you ahead of your hiring plan? Is your hiring plan settled? How are folks ramping? How are the tenured folks executing? So at the people level, then you need to have all of those items broken down into discrete goals that can be reviewed regularly by the team, the leadership team in particular, and making sure that we’re on track or off track, right?
So we can have a plan, but the plan can go off the rails really quickly if we’re not. Know, putting us a high level of governance in place to understand where we are and then making the adjustments on the fly where necessary to make sure that we can course correct throughout the course of the year. So revenue, operating model, hiring plan, the cadences and the right fruitful discussion.
And then my hope is that the plan that you have in paper is a good one. Because plants can go awfully awry. Throughout the year, and that’s why you see so many companies in the last couple of years put together a July replan. Some have even put together an April replan if you have to replan that early in the year, your plan was trash to begin with at the beginning of the year, I.
Yeah. Not to mention double or triple the work, which no one wants, adjacent question here. So maybe we can start with you, Jeff, or we can push it to someone else. Question from Pete. What is your role, or what should the optimal role for Rev ops be in planning around pipeline and demand gen strategy for, each of your respective companies in your experience?
For me, it’s surfacing the data, attribution is always fun. So you know how we talk about attribution is an important thing, but at the end of the day, what’s concrete is you are spending some money, you are putting together, you are accumulating time across the team. To put it, put together these campaigns.
And then ideally what you should be looking for is how much pipeline have you influenced or sourced, and then how much of that pipeline has actually resulted, in the appropriate conversion rates. So depending on your sales cycle, you might look, has it gotten to proposal stage within the quarter, throughout the year?
If you have a medium, a short term life cycle, how many of those deals have actually won? So when I’m planning, I’m bringing the data. To bear. ’cause that helps us appropriately res allocate resources. Yeah I would add that, being that voice of reason and having the data to support any ideas or decisions that are about to be made right.
Looking into the historical performance, looking into your time looking just to available book of business, right? What is possible, what is not? What other creative channels for the pipeline generation can be brought in? Can we, how do we plan for that? Are there any spiffs, for example, or any comp measures that we can think about for the next year as we’re bringing those campaigns? So I would say we are, we’re being this voice of reason and validating. And validating any sort of plans with data. And I think that’s such a good way to. Articulate, being a trusted advisor to the business, being a voice of reason and not just a doer when someone tells you to push the buttons, right?
And so I think that’s a really good kind of north star, to, to shoot for as a rev ops leader. Question from Jackie around kind of org structure. She said, some large organizations will rule enablement under rev ops, some won’t. Any thoughts from you guys on the optimal structure for revenue operations as a function generally beyond the even just enablement?
I think having a really clear definition of enablement is a good start, because it folks will define it a little bit differently and I think really making sure that you’re clear on where does it live. I think there’s, I. Specifically on enablement. There’s like a hard and a soft side.
I think some folks are different are more equipped to, to be better, at enabling folks on the hard and the soft, specifically, like technology versus positioning, things of that nature. So I think first going in there and really understanding who, defining it, where does it live and if it is gonna be split, making sure that people are complimenting and they understand both sides and that they’re complimenting each other on how.
Who’s doing what at the same time? So it, it’s joined. So not only the how, but also the what is at the same time. Often I find ’em being very disparate. People are communicating around, like they’re very focused on tooling, but they’re not really understanding why or the outcome or really how to position, around that tooling or vice versa.
They don’t understand the tooling, but they, have the general idea of, how to position something. So there’s a disconnect. And when you go to measure the outcomes.
Great. Thank you Lonnie. One question I got from, attendee before we hopped on is just how do you develop the kind of soft skills necessary to advance? There’s a lot of talk in the relevance community around all the technical skills, all the systems, but I’m curious, any of you guys have any thoughts on the soft skills that really matter and how you built them?
You just do it. There’s no way. There’s no other way, like you just need to do it. If we’re talking about communication skills, you just, you just go out there and you build relationships with your key stakeholders, right? That Lonnie said, you schedule your one-on-ones, you schedule your sinks, you you are working on understanding their objectives and their pain and what they’re after, right?
And you stand top of that, right? Getting out of the comfort zone of being out there. A lot of ops folks come from the technical background, and as technical guys, we just sit there in our spreadsheets or in our systems, right? So we need to. Pull ourselves from there and in front of a, in front of people, and start developing the skill.
I’ve always admired sales reps, how easy they can, find, way to be friends with pretty much anyone, right? Clearly communicate, be very easygoing, right? So I look up to sales leaders, to get that bit of magic, from them. But other than speak up, there’s there’s no other way.
Get out of the comfort zone.
I’d say a couple of things. One, have some mentors, a coach or a personal board of advisors. There are always ways to improve your communication. Second, some folks have developed like a How to Work with Me Guide. Like you, you could take, I forget what it’s called now. Some self-assessments to determine like your communication style.
I find that there are times where I’m ex excellent at communicating, and it’s usually when I’m not context switching, but when I’m context switching, oh my god, my, my wires get crossed, right? Or sometimes I communicate too technical and I’m communicating to someone that it doesn’t care about the technical details.
So having a little bit of a plan around how do I communicate with certain folks, is a good approach. Third is really coming to the table with active listening skills. It’s something I’ve had to personally develop over the years, which is really reframe the problem set or a set of challenges that they’re going through.
Get them to a place where they’re saying, that’s right. If you’ve ever read Chris Voss, never split the difference. One of the things in his book that I really do enjoy, probably the only thing I enjoyed was he gets the prospect to say, that’s right. And that means you come from a place of understanding, what their problem sets are.
And so when you get to that position, I think folks can feel like they’re being heard, right? The other area of challenge is, let’s say you’re behind on a project, right? It doesn’t feel good to be really behind. It creates incredible amount of stress on you. On all the people on your team. And so finding a way to manage, how do you communicate that time crunch effectively.
And also identify when do you need to buy time or air cover for your team? So tho those are like unique communication challenges that I find that I’m always constantly trying to refine. That’s really helpful, Jeff. Thanks. I’m conscious of time here. We have two minutes left. I wanna finish with a quick rapid fire, if you will, in the context of earning a seat at the table, becoming a senior rev ops leader, which all three of you have done.
If you could give one piece of advice to everyone listening on how they can elevate their career over the next few years to sit in seats like you guys are sitting in, what would it be? And if you can each keep it to a 50, 30 seconds, that’d be appreciative so we can get everyone back, to their next meeting.
I think I said it several times, but I’ll say it once again. Communicate, own it and speak up. As rev ops, we all know where dead bodies are buried. We know where the problems are. So we need to drive attention, to those issues and be able to articulate clearly as to why we need to be, to address them and what’s gonna be the ramification of us not, addressing those.
Owning it and, speaking up. I would say
Ani, how about you? Two things. I think make sure that you’re always doing what’s going to be in the best interest of the company, have to do what’s in the best interest of the company, and I think in order, whether it’s a popular or an unpopular decision or the outcome is not desirable, making sure that you just double clicking again on Olga’s point about communication, building those trusted relationships.
You’re communicating the good, the bad, the ugly, and you’re communicating just to communicate. Say hi, build relationships. So when you are communicating what’s going to happen and doing the right thing for the business, people always know that you’re promoting collective success. Above all off, Jeff, bring us home.
So I’ve been writing this down. It’s a framework that I’ve worked with my team. One, it’s called park, PARC, problem set. Identify the right problems, analysis and insight, right? Come in with the data, make a recommendation, and then communicate, right? So you do those four things over and over again. I think it’ll be very successful.
It’s a great place to leave it. Jeff Ani, we can’t thank you enough for coming and sharing your wisdom with us. To everyone listening, we’ll send out a recording of the panel for you, as well as some more content on how to think about being strategic in rev ops. Thank you again so much guys. This was awesome.
Hope everyone has a great rest of the week. Thanks everybody. Thank you everyone. Thanks. Take care. Bye-bye.
