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: Company Product + Mission Company Health Company's People 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 ...Read More

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 ref ...Read More

To enter the tech industry as revenue operations manager, you're potentially trying to make 2 moves at once: Entering the tech industry from another industry 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: Easier to market yourself to the hiring manager by only making one transition (e.g. you already have rev ops experience in non-tech indust ...Read More

Here's a few trends I've observed for revenue operations: Rev ops is becoming an umbrella org for operations teams supporting other business functions 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 ...Read More