AMA: DigitalOcean Director of Revenue Operations / Customer Care, Saad Farooq on Scaling a Revenue Ops Team

As a company scales and grows, the skills and expertise needed in the team may evolve and change. When looking to hire additional team members, it can be helpful to consider a variety of skills and experiences that complement and differ from those of your current team. Some skills and experiences that may be helpful to consider as you scale your team could include: 1. Specialized expertise: As your company grows and takes on new projects, you may need team members with specialized expertise in specific areas, such as data analysis, machine learning, or cybersecurity. 2. Leadership experience: As you scale your team, you may need to hire team members who have experience leading and managing others, either as managers or as team leads. 3. Cross-functional skills: It can be helpful to have team members who have skills and experience in a variety of different functional areas, such as marketing, sales, and product development. This can help ensure that your team has a diverse set of perspectives and can tackle a wide range of challenges. 4. Diverse backgrounds: A diverse team with a variety of backgrounds and experiences can bring a range of perspectives and approaches to problem-solving, which can be especially valuable as your company grows and takes on new challenges. Ultimately, the specific skills and experiences that you look for as you scale your team will depend on the needs and goals of your company, as well as the specific roles and responsibilities of the positions you are looking to fill.

Scaling a revenue operations team beyond the first revenue operations manager can be a complex process, as it involves balancing the needs of the team with the goals and constraints of the business. Here are a few tips that may be helpful as you scale your revenue operations team: 1. Define clear roles and responsibilities: As you bring on additional team members, it's important to define clear roles and responsibilities for each team member to ensure that everyone understands their scope of work and how their efforts fit into the overall goals of the team. 2. Establish processes and systems: To ensure that your team can operate efficiently and effectively as it grows, it's important to establish clear processes and systems for managing tasks, tracking progress, and communicating with other teams and stakeholders. 3. Foster collaboration and teamwork: Encouraging collaboration and teamwork among team members can help ensure that everyone is working towards common goals and can support one another as the team grows. 4. Invest in training and development: Providing training and development opportunities for your team can help ensure that team members have the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in their roles, and can also help build a culture of continuous learning and improvement. 5. Focus on team culture and engagement: Building a positive team culture and engaging with team members can help foster a sense of belonging and purpose, which can be especially important as you scale the team and bring on new team members.

Depends on what parts of the organization your RevOps team Support. When you hire internally from the teams that you want to Support, these people can help you realize problems that your team needs to solve before someone else has to ask for them. If I wanted to go on to join the RevOps team, I'd start by looking at items that the team is operationalizing for my specific function (it could be Marketing, Sales, Support, anything) and learn the ins and out of it. 

There are a variety of ways that revenue operations teams can communicate updates and activities to the rest of the company. Some potential options could include: 1. Regular meetings: Scheduling regular meetings with relevant teams and stakeholders can be an effective way to share updates and discuss ongoing projects and initiatives. These meetings could be held in person or remotely, depending on the needs of the team. 2. Company-wide updates: Sharing updates with the entire company through channels such as email newsletters or all-hands meetings can help ensure that everyone is aware of what the revenue operations team is working on and how it aligns with the broader goals of the organization. 3. Collaboration tools: Using collaboration tools such as project management software or document sharing platforms can help revenue operations teams share updates and collaborate with other teams in real-time. 4. Internal communications channels: Leveraging internal communication channels such as company-wide chat platforms or intranet sites can help revenue operations teams share updates and communicate with other teams in an efficient and convenient way. Ultimately, the best approach for communicating updates and activities will depend on the needs and preferences of your team and the organization as a whole. It may be helpful to experiment with different approaches and gather feedback to determine the most effective methods for your team.

When expanding a revenue operations team from one to multiple people, it can be helpful to establish a set of key processes to ensure that the team is able to operate efficiently and effectively. Some potential processes to consider could include: 1. Task management: Setting up a system for managing and tracking tasks can help ensure that team members are aware of their responsibilities and can work effectively towards common goals. 2. Communication and collaboration: Establishing clear channels for communication and collaboration can help team members stay informed about ongoing projects and initiatives, and can facilitate the exchange of ideas and feedback. 3. Performance tracking and evaluation: Setting up processes for tracking and evaluating team performance can help ensure that the team is meeting its objectives and can identify areas for improvement. 4. Training and development: Providing training and development opportunities can help team members acquire the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in their roles and can support the overall growth and development of the team. 5. Team culture and engagement: Establishing a positive team culture and engaging with team members can help foster a sense of belonging and purpose, and can be especially important as the team grows and evolves. Ultimately, the specific processes that you set up will depend on the needs and goals of your team and organization. It may be helpful to consult with team members and other stakeholders to determine the processes that will be most effective for your team.

With the economic downturn, we can anticipate a ton of teams reducing or limiting headcount this year, which is going to make a lot of the teams panic and try to solve everyone’s concerns with the same level of urgency. This is a recipe for disaster. If you are supporting another function, product, or team - you should prioritize what they want to prioritize. However, a very important principle to remember for any team that is shorthanded or has limited bandwidth is that 'Not all Problems are created equal'. If you are helping your stakeholders and partners meet their most important goal or finish the most important project, whatever was not done or completed becomes a lot less of a concern. Separately, I talked about prioritizing deliverables in a response to another question. I am posting it below for reference. P0: it starts with how Performance Evaluation or Yearly Performance review is done at the org. I'd prioritize based on whatever goal I am going to be rated against in my annual review. P1: What my Line Manager expects from this role and team? "Making my boss successful" is everyone's primary job. If every person in the organization works towards making their boss/line manager successful, the entire organization thrives. It is a simple yet effective way to align for success. P2: Northstar metrics for the Org. That is one main business goals that execs speak about in their board meetings. I'd definitely want to contribute to that goal in every way possible.

Start with identifying what parts of the organization your RevOps team will be supporting. Then find the resources in each of these teams you will be supporting to either become your stakeholders and partners or if you do have the option to hire, bring them into your org. When you hire internally from the teams that you want to Support, these people can help you realize problems that your team needs to solve before someone else has to ask for them. 

The Growth Team: responsible for the expansion and bringing second-order revenue. Includes Sales & Business Development. The Success team: responsible for managing customer lifecycle, relationships, and Churn. Includes CSMs, TAMs, and Onboarding Managers. The Support teams: provide support for customers and internal tooling and operational support to the entire org. Includes Tech Support, Customer Service, Operations & Data Analysts, and PMs. These are the three pillars under the broader RevOps umbrella in our org. You can have enablement bucketed under your Support team or have them live separately, but is also an important piece of the puzzle. 

Understanding the importance of Churn, topped with the ability to manage Churn. Churn is the greatest destruction of value for most SaaS companies…and people significantly underestimate it. We are experiencing the first significant economic headwinds since SaaS became mainstream. Companies that can efficiently retain their customers during significant economic headwinds will be the ones that survive (and hopefully thrive). To be able to do that, you need people who understand Churn as well as they understand Growth. 

P0: it starts with how Performance Evaluation or Yearly Performance review is done at the org. I'd prioritize based on whatever goal I am going to be rated against in my annual review. P1: What my Line Manager expects from this role and team? "Making my boss successful" is everyone's primary job. If every person in the organization works towards making their boss/line manager successful, the entire organization thrives. It is a simple yet effective way to align for success. P2: Northstar metrics for the Org. That is one main business goals that execs speak about in their board meetings. I'd definitely want to contribute to that goal in every way possible. 

Identifying preventable churn from the non-preventable churn and focusing on second-order revenue. Everyone is going to see churn trend up this year while things normalize, which is going to make a lot of Rev Ops teams panic and try to solve everyone’s concerns with the same level of urgency. Rev Ops teams and specifically Customer success teams need to go into triage mode and determine which customers are really worth trying to save. Not every customer is worth saving and that will be a hard pill for many customer success professionals to swallow. Customer success teams can gracefully let customers churn and keep good relationships. While companies will lose their ARR and potential expansion ARR, they will hopefully keep more future second-order revenue intact. Second-order revenue potential can be massive, so making sure not to screw that up is critical.

I have seen it done the other way around even in my own case. I started with Content & marketing before I went to Business Development and eventually landed in Support and Success. Now as a RevOps leader, I understand each of these functions enough to support operations in each of these teams. So at a Leadership level, I'd prefer someone who has done some of it, if not all, and then is able to oversee all of this. If I were to start from RevOps and then specialize in one of the fields, I'd start with Data or Business Systems and then venture into the field whose processes I liked operationalizing the most.

My preference is to hire internally from Support roles. It can be Customer Service, Analysts in Operations, Data teams or coordinators, and ICs and Proj / Program office. Cross-functional collaboration is a very important skill required in any RevOps role, and if you have served one or more parts of the organization, institutional knowledge is a valuable asset. This allows a very short ramp-up time and a ton of valuable insight that only an insider can have. This also provides a career path for Support roles in your organization. 

For me, at any organization and in any role, the most important alignment is the one with the overall Organization's goals. The strategy should be dynamic and it should continue to evolve. The tasks your team performs on day to day will change as your strategy evolves. However, it is important that all you are doing is serving those org-level goals. In my previous life, we had YoY growth as a north star metric. Lately, I have seen mature orgs putting Net Revenue Retention (NRR) on top of their scorecards. I try and tie all the tactics that my team is implementing with that north-star metric to stay aligned with the business goals. 

Any tool that allows you to analyze large sets of data. When dealing with hundreds of millions in revenue, and hundreds of thousands of customers, data is your only true guide and best friend. You can 10x your potential as a RevOps leader as you become better at being able to analyze large sets of data.