AMA: Intercom Director, Sales Operations, Won Choi on Scaling a Revenue Ops Team

I view projects and priorities as "Big Rocks" and "Small Projects." The big rocks are foundational work streams for the business and will help drive the business forward. The small projects are also important but will be more of a "one and done" type of work. Big rocks should have one driver, and one person should be driving at most two big rocks a quarter. Big rocks also should not be rushed. I have seen many mistakes where if a big rock is not done well, the members need to go back and rip/rep ...Read More

The sales ops team is organized by a "Global" team and a "Regional" team. We have three global teams: 1. sales strategy & planning, 2. sales analytics & insights, and 3. sales process & tools. There are two teams within the regional team covering EMEA, NAMER, and APAC. I'll go into more detail on each team. Sales strategy & planning team: Responsible for org/role design, market segmentation, TAM analysis, headcount and productivity analysis, quota planning, sales comp plan design ...Read More

When there are only one or two team members, I would have the team focus on mission-critical projects only. The three main areas would be 1: Sales process & forecasting, 2. Define and measure KPIs, 3. Sales Compensation design. Initially, individuals will cover broader responsibilities but will not have the capacity to go very deep in each area. All of these can evolve throughout the business, but I would clearly define and set the structure by working closely with your sales leader. Sales P ...Read More

Common traits are resilience, collaboration, and the ability to communicate effectively. I am sure these can apply to other roles as well. Also, I see all these as learnable skills that can come with practice and experience. Resilience: Rev Ops is a job where there is never a dull day. Priorities will shift quickly, and fires will happen frequently. There will be times when you are dealing with emotional stakeholders and receiving complaints, or things did not turn out the way that was planned. ...Read More

Most of the time, you can find rev ops teams being the busiest teams. There is usually no downtime as in sales; there is a quarterly cycle, and planning happens every six months (or a year). As leading a rev ops team, I value the two metrics below that some teams tend to deprioritize. % of time spent firefighting (or responding to ad-hoc tasks) vs. working on big rocks that help move the business forward. In many cases, I see teams at 80/20. Ideally, it should be the other way around, but if you ...Read More