AMA: HubSpot Vice President of Revenue Operations, Sowmya Srinivasan on Revenue Ops Career Path

The future of revenue operations is leveraging AI (predictive & generative) to accelerate organizational growth by making reps more efficient and effective with AI powered insights, automation and scale ! With AI today, revops is best positioned to Automate/eliminate the repetitive, orchestrate the customer's journey with real-time insights and execute organizational strategy with engaging experiences both for customers and reps! With this lens, educating self on AI and understanding how to leverage AI to design powerful experiences for the organization ,to drive revenue growth will be a valuable skill to have! With the pace of innovation, having a mindset to continuously invest in learning is also important!

The must have for a revenue operations leader data driven decision making and the ability to turn data into insights and insights to impact! Connecting the dots, identifying risks and opportunities to fuel growth is a differentiator! Another must have as a leader is dealing with ambiguity ! Revops at its best, is Solving complex problems )at times with inadequate information), designing initiatives, setting objects and breaking organizational objectives into byte-size consumable chunks for the rest of the organization and mobilizing change across departments working with a wide-variety of stakeholders and constantly shifting priorities. How to do this is not a series of steps or a simple playbook, it requires one to look beyond what's possible and operate in a state of managed ambiguity (don’t pass chaos or complexity to your teams or stakeholders). This is an important differentiator to set yourself apart as an effective leader! In terms of soft skills - effective communication, ability to simplify and communicate vision/ideas clearly, good stakeholder management, collaboration and adaptability to change are all valuable!

The typical entry into a revops career is as an analyst. This could be a functional analyst within functional operational units such as a marketing , Sales ops /customer success or a data/automation/systems analyst progressing on the technical front. Once you have enough experience/proficiency under your belt , you could continue on an individual contributor track establishing yourself as a strategist or you could transition into mid/senior level revops roles where you would be responsible for developing and implementing strategies to drive revenue growth/efficiency. Further growth on the same track could mean overall strategic & operational responsibility of a function such as Head of Sales Ops, Head of Marketing Ops, Heads of CS Strategy & Ops, Head of GTM Systems and progressing all the way to a CRO/COO! Having shared this, I would also add there is no “typical career path”, you orchestrate your career and as you progress in your career - you could at any point transition into a functional leadership role.

There are 3 skills that I would say are very desirable & transferable for a career in Revops - * Analytical Skills/acumen- The ability to analyze data, leverage data to drive decisions, infer insights to drive business impact is critical for a revops organization! Solving problems, leveraging data to answer key business questions, identifying patterns and trends to surface risks or opportunities for growth for the organization is a great value add! * Project Management Skills - Ability to plan, connect strategy to execution, manage key initiatives across multiple departments/stakeholders by driving alignment is critical. Every revops organization has a planning unit who are responsible for understanding organizational objectives, cascading/breaking objectives into concise goals with the right frameworks and designing the operating mechanism to measure and track progress by identifying the right KPIs & outcomes to deliver! * Technical Skills (Systems/Automation) - Revops is all about driving non-linear growth for an organization and identifying opportunities to drive rep efficiency and effectiveness is the biggest driver for that. Having the technical proficiency to design the right tools, systems and processes to help fuel growth and drive efficiency is highly desirable! Apart from these, the other valuable skills are communication, storytelling (insights -> impact) , ability to deal with ambiguity to name a few more!

I would caveat this answer ahead by saying this is not revops specific. This is about the important things to look for while evaluating a new opportunity - 1. Opportunity to drive impact - how does the role map to my skill sets and do I see an opportunity for me to drive impact and create value? This to me means growth for the company and thereby growth for me! 2. Culture and Values - People, culture and values are core to have a great experience and find a sense of belonging in an organization. I believe you are a better leader, a better team member, a better employee if you love what you do and if you have a great team to partner with. 3. Learning and Growth - Does the organization offer opportunities to continue learning and further hone my leadership skills? How does this opportunity help me continue on the career trajectory/aspirations for self? Other important aspects to consider are management and leadership, Company growth trajectory (addressable market, competitive advantage..), having the right work/life balance and compensation (if it's important to you)!