Titles mean different things at different companies, so I'll answer the question more along the skills you need to be promoted to more senior roles within revenue Ops. The big skill is the ability to think big and think ahead. It's very easy to spend your entire week or month fire fighting as a line manager. As you grow your role and scope, you need to allocate time to think about the future and innovate. How can the company accelerate growth? Reduce costs? How does the team further the goals of the business? How do we measure the strategic programs? How do you retain and develop talent? These are questions that great managers start thinking about and they are table stakes for "senior managers / directors."

I hit on this somewhat above but generally it should be * 30 Days: Learning and Discovery * Meet with key stakeholders (Managers and ICs) to learn current processes, bottlenecks, and paint points. Since ops roles are very cross functional, make sure you are meeting with people not just in your direct domain (sales ops people should meet with marketers, marketing ops with sales folks, etc.). Get to know the business - what’s humming along and what areas need your attention. * Spend time on general company and product knowledge - it’s so difficult to make time to learn and gain product expertise after you’re working on ops problems. * Make a backlog of asks and prioritize them with your manager; identify 1 quick hit (ideally with a stakeholder-facing solution) you can execute on in your first month. * If you have an internal data team, spend time with them to get details on where to go to self-serve your data requests (e.g. which field do you use for pipeline date, what is the source of truth for churn metrics). Put your knowledge to use and pull reporting for an upcoming meeting. * Document any processes that you uncover and the answers to questions you had (especially if somone had to give you a verbal answer). This will help the next hire ramp more quickly. * 60 Days: Contributing * Distill your findings from month 1 and prioritize your first 2-3 larger projects that you’ll be working on. Scope effort and impact and get buy-in from your manager and stakeholders that these are the biggest asks for you to be working on out of the gate. Start executing! * Define your OKRs (either on the above projects or aligning with the ongoing company schedule and planning process) * Take ownership of key systems or processes (e.g. taking over as admin of your CRM, Support or marketing automation tool). * Share out your progress to the wider org (ideally complete 1 of the larger tasks you scoped) and document your work. Ensure teammates know how to engage with you and to get asks in the ops queue. * 90 Days: Planning and Taking Initiative * Iterate! You should be up and running and have a good understanding of business drivers, logic and reporting by this point. Pinpoint areas where there is friction and try to remove it. * Work on shifting from doing reactive to proactive work (from responding to a “I need help with this quote in CPQ” ask, to “Here are some enhanced flows that will make the quoting process easier for everyone”). * Look ahead 6 and 12 months down the road - what are the big rocks that the company is working towards during that time and what ops needs will they require? Anchor some of your projects to these further off goals or it’s difficult to make time for longer-term work when being inundated with ad hoc requests.

I think the revenue operations career path is anything but typical. It's part of the reason why there's so little training and education around how to be a revenue operations leader, and why there is so much demand for good talent. The ways that I've seen people successfully enter and expand within the revenue operations space is: 1. Specialize at first: It's good to have an idea of where you want to focus your initial career development within RevOps. I would start with Sales Ops, Marketing Ops, or CS Ops and learn everything you can around that specific discipline. Try to start in that niche and grow your experience from there. 2. Lead to grow: For those of you who want to grow out of the specialized role and into a RevOps leader where you oversee multiple operations functional areas, I would try to get leadership experience in just your specialized area first (Marketing Operations Manager, Sales Operations Manager, etc). If you don't have sufficient leadership skills built up by the time you transition into managing multiple different functional areas, some that you will know better than others, you will likely struggle. 3. Take on new challenges: Everyone in RevOps knows that there are more asks than there will ever be time. To uplevel your career path, be selective in what you choose to take on. Every business will present opportunities that align with the core abilities that you can knock out of the park. Start with those, but grow into the things that are slightly outside of your comfort zone that will enable you to expand your experience and grow into a larger role.

To be successful in revenue operations you must 1. have a data analysis foundation 2. be a strong problem solver and 3. be a good story teller. 1. Data foundation: the requirements will change depending on your company's tech stack (SQL, Tableau, SFDC, etc.), but you must have experience analyzing, visualizing and synthesize takeaways from data. Almost everything you do in rev ops must be data driven, and understanding how to pull actionable takeaways from large data sets is key. 2. Problem solving: Know different problem solving frameworks and apply them in your day to day to get experience with how they work. The most basic being 1. start with a hypothesis 2. test that hypothesis 3. debrief on results and iterate. It is also ok to test in an unscalable / manual / simple way. One of the biggest fallacies operators run into is trying to run the perfect test--use the 80/20 rule and be a scrappy problem solver 3. Story Telling: A large part of the rev ops role is aligning different teams (sales, marketing, product, finance, leadership, etc.) to work towards the same goal or on the same initiative--and story telling is a huge part of getting this cross-functional alignment. An operator needs to 1. get buy in (show the business impact and why the team should be excited to work on this) 2. clarify how the team is going to execute (demonstrate a well thought out plan with deadlines and DRIs) 3. assign ownership (identify who is responsible for each aspect of the plan).

The specific answer here will depend on the type of organization (e.g. B2B/B2C), target segmentation (e.g. Enterprise/SMB) and go-to-market model (e.g. Product Led Growth, Sales Driven). I'd suggest looking at this through teh framework of of leading indicators (input metrics) and lagging indicators (output metrics) which are aligned with your buyer's journey and then determine over which time period it makes sense to evalute these metrics. Factors such as sales cycle will play heavily into these decisions. If we decompose revenue, it's comprised of # of deals * ASP + recurring revenue from your installed base (taking a simplistic view) which are all output metrics. To look at the underlying health of the business in the short-term, I'd look at the input metrics that drive the # of deals, ASP and installed base health and ensure that there are clear drivers aligned to these metrics within the organization. For medium-term to long-term, I'd look at diagnostic metrics to look at the composition of your output metrics (in this case, revenue) and look at what channels and demand sources helped to generate this revenue (e.g. BDRs, Marketing Leads, Partners, eCommerce, PLG, Services). You might look at this on a trended or quarterly basis and assess the relative efficiency or effectiveness of these channels and work with your leadership team to discuss what pivots or shifts you should consider making to accelerate sales velocity.

Your questions should revolve around identifying disconnects between what teams are doing day-to-day and how that flows into company revenue. A few sample questions: * Do you understand how your targets roll up to the other functional team targets and ultimately the company's revenue goal? (if the answer is not a definitive yes, you should focus on building and socializing a unified demand plan across the business) * What does success look like for you and your team? * What systems do we have in place as a business to measure success? (if those systems are very different across these functions, you have some work to do!) * What things prevent you from understanding whether or not an initiative that your team runs is working?

It's tough to get hired into RevOps straight out of school. The best path to go straight into RevOps is to get an internship. We've had some amazing interns that joined us as full-time associates upon graduation. As an intern, you'll get valuable exposure to the organzation and can determine if RevOps is right for you. Other things I look for in recent graduates: * Business analytics courses * Strong Excel experience * Internship or other work experience that is data-driven and analytical * A demonstrated strong work ethic throughout school

First and foremost, whatever the OKRs you choose need to check two basic principles in my opinion: 1.Alignment with Business Objectives: Each OKR has to be directly tied to the broader goals of the organisation, ensuring that the efforts in RevOps contribute tangibly to the company's overall success. 2.Passing the "So What" Test: The chosen OKRs must be crafted not just to track activities but to generate meaningful outcomes. They should answer the "so what" by demonstrating how each key result impacts the business either by driving growth, efficiency, or helping with market expansion. Here are some examples of some good OKRs you may want to start with: Objective 1: Improve Sales Efficiency * KR1: Increase the lead-to-close rate by 15% by the end of Q2. * KR2: Reduce the sales cycle length by an average of 10 days by Q3. * KR3: Implement a new CRM system with at least 95% adoption rate among the sales team within 4 months. Objective 2: Enhance Customer Retention and Expansion * KR1: Achieve a customer retention rate of 90% by the end of the fiscal year. * KR2: Increase upsell and cross-sell revenue by 20% by Q4. * KR3: Implement a customer feedback loop, achieving a 50% response rate, to inform product development by the end of Q3. Objective 3: Optimize Revenue Operations Processes * KR1: Automate 30% of manual reporting tasks by the end of Q1. * KR2: Reduce operational costs by 10% while maintaining or improving service quality by the end of the year. * KR3: Develop and launch a training program for new RevOps tools with 100% team completion by Q2. Objective 4: Strengthen Data-Driven Decision Making * KR1: Increase the accuracy of sales forecasting by 25% by Q3. * KR2: Implement a new analytics dashboard used by 100% of the sales team weekly by Q2. * KR3: Conduct quarterly data audits to ensure 98% data accuracy across all sales and customer platforms. Objective 5: Expand Market Reach and Revenue Streams * KR1: Launch two new product lines contributing to a 15% increase in total revenue by Q4. * KR2: Enter two new geographic markets, achieving a sales target of $X by the year-end. * KR3: Establish three new strategic partnerships that enhance product offerings by Q3. Each of these objectives tackles a different aspect of Revenue Operations, from sales efficiency and customer retention to process optimisation, data-driven decision-making, and market expansion. The key results are quantifiable and time-bound, providing clear targets to aim for. Remember, OKRs should be reviewed and adjusted regularly to reflect changes in the business environment and organisational priorities.

The data on this type of dashboard is truly only as good as the input from the sales reps. The most effective way to get this data moving, with accuracy is to hold accountability via the sales leadership team. Opportunity stage progression measurement (aka "deal cycle time") should be a part of a quarterly forecasting motion. To hold sales reps accountable, leaders should work with their team to identify stuck deals that have the potential to make it into the quarter (or any time period) for closure. When the rep talks about a deal closing but the data doesn't match the narrative, the leader needs to push their rep to get into Salesforce and update the opportunity. To supplement this, you can put some visuals on your dashboard around number of deals in a given stage and average time spent. This will spark the "why" questions around how things can move faster and uncover the any data related issues.

I would typically evaluate a list of questions that can be grouped as follows: Impact * Would this opportunity allow me to make a meaningful impact that could make the function/company significantly more efficient? Growth/Learning * Is the company on a high growth trajectory and/or poised to continue growing? * Would this opportunity provide a step-up in role and responsibility and/or provide a ramp towards achieving my ultimate career goals? * Would this role provide me with an opportunity to learn and grow professionally? Financial * Does this role meet my financial goals and expectations i.e. does it compensate me enough to rock the proverbial boat? Finally, I should also mention that although people/culture are quite important, thus far I have had mixed success in assessing this definitively before hand. Personally I have been in both situations - one where my initial impression of the hiring manager was not great but accepted the offer for the work and ended up having a fantastic rapport with the manager and the other where where I took everything that I was told at face value and ended up regretting the move.