AMA: Databricks Director - Sales Strategy & Operations, Ken Liu on Revenue Ops Career Path

I consider a few factors when exploring new opportunities at another company: 1. Company Product + Mission 2. Company Health 3. Company's People 4. Role Growth Opportunity Company Product - I want to make sure that I believe in the company's products or its mission. Choose a company whose products or mission align well with your own interests. Doing so will give you more excitement in the interview (the recruiter will pick up on it), give you more fulfillment in the role, and translate to more energy on the job. Company Health - I want to join a company that is on a good business trajectory, is healthy financially, and will be around for many years to come. There's no point joining your dream role if the company will go belly-up soon. If the company is public, take time to review its recent 10-K and 10-Qs. If it's private, take a look to see if it has reputable investors, review how many rounds of funding it has and how quickly it's been growing HC, and research how its products stand up against competitors. Company People - I want to work with people who I like and can learn from, including the leadership team, my manager and my directs. Use the interviews as a two-way opportunity to vet if your potential new colleagues are people who you'd enjoy spending time both in and outside of the office. Role Growth - I have a growth mindset, and always look for roles that will stretch me and provide runway for growth. Growth can take many forms, including taking on new or more responsibilities, and/or leading larger teams. I want to always be adding new skills to my rev ops tool chest, and look for roles that enable me to do so.

To enter the tech industry as revenue operations manager, you're potentially trying to make 2 moves at once: 1. Entering the tech industry from another industry 2. Taking on a revenue operations manager role from another non rev ops role If you are trying to make both moves at once, you may want to consider making one change at a time. The benefits of doing so are: 1. Easier to market yourself to the hiring manager by only making one transition (e.g. you already have rev ops experience in non-tech industry or you're already in tech and are trying to transition in to rev ops) 2. The learning curve may be flatter with one move, better setting up you for success Additionally, when entering rev ops in tech, you'll want understand if the tech company is a hardware vs software or hybrid. The GTM operations for SW vs HW can be quite different and you'll want to be familiar with their differences. Also, even within software companies, whether their revenue model is subscription vs consumption based (i.e. pay only for what you use) impacts their GTM motion.

Here's a few trends I've observed for revenue operations: 1. Rev ops is becoming an umbrella org for operations teams supporting other business functions 2. Rev ops is fast adopting AI, but AI is still in its infancy Rev Ops Umbrella Org - historically departments like marketing, sales, sales enablement and customer success operate separately and have their own operations team. However, given how inter-connected these functions are to help acquire, retain, and up-sell customers, companies are starting to move the operations team for each function under an overall rev operations org. Take Action - As a rev ops practitioner, regardless of your current org structure, set-up operational cadences and joint KPIs with other operations teams to promote better collaboration and drive revenue growth. Use the cadences to review performance against joint KPIs and provide a feedback loop on your functions (e.g. what types of customers does Cust Success successfully retain or upsell that we can inform Marketing to target as an ICP) to create a flywheel for revenue acceleration. AI is Table Stakes - GTM SaaS vendors have been quick to embrace and incorporate AI into their offerings. The majority of vendor's AI use cases help increase GTM productivity (e.g. use GenAI to compose an email or conduct research on an account). What AI doesn't do well right now are to provide proactive insights to Rev Ops team (i.e. recommend what account to work on, what specific tasks to complete and in what sequence in order to maximize revenue). Take Action - Increase seller productivity by enabling them on the latest AI functionality in your tool stack, and incorporating them into your playbooks. At the same time, no vendor will have more knowledge about your company's data and sales playbook than your company to determine what proactive insights can be raised. Work with your IT team to gauge what AI technologies are needed to surface actionable insights, and evaluate whether to buy vs build the tools taking into consideration needed resources, cost and time.

The hard skills necessary for success in rev ops varies upon role, but usually include: * Strong understanding of the GTM motion for the team you support (e.g. sales, pre-sales, customer success) * Comfort analyzing data to surface insights and make recommendations * Thinking from first principles when addressing a problem * Familiarity with key GTM tools that the sales team you support uses (e.g. Salesforce) Worth noting are the equally important soft skills that a rev ops leader should continue to refine * Empathy for sellers; proactively think about how you can directly/indirectly help sellers drive more revenue * Listening to your business partners and asking questions to understand what are their pain points * Pro-actively partnering with other operations teams (e.g. marketing, enablement) to support one another * Think of joint KPIs (e.g.#of SQLs that SDRs and Marketing can help drive) and feedback loops (e.g. Cust Success helping Marketing identify ICPs of customers who renew well)