AMA: Intercom VP, Revenue Operations, Tyler Will on Sales Operations

The thing that has worked best for this is to publish a roadmap of our objectives / projects each quarter. We share that with the leadership team (Demand Gen, Sales, Success & Solutions VPs and their direct reports) we work with closely, make sure everyone is aligned on the priorities, and then talk about these regularly (often engaging those leaders on the project teams directly). This creates awareness and an important sense that my team has to do more than just daily operational work. We' ...Read More

I can't think of a metric I would say is overrated right now. I think where teams run into problems is mostly around inconsistencies in reporting, or a lack of a holistic view of the business performance. I have a bit of this challenge now where I have all the dashboards and access to data via Claude that I could ever want, but I have to do a ton of work just to get started. A really clear place to see the 10-15 essential metrics / trends quickly so I can see if there are headline level problems ...Read More

At the analyst level, I want to see curiosity and some interest in business more broadly. This won't come out in Excel/SQL tests, questions about what they know about Salesforce or forecasting, etc. I think the people who are just looking for "a job" will quickly plateau, complain about lack of opportunity/growth, and not contribute beyond the reactive doing what is specifically asked of them. That means finding a person who has those two things has a much higher ceiling in this type of role.But ...Read More

We're lucky in that I don't think reps view us this way most of the time. How we got there is probably a multi-year project and the result of a lot of different factors. A few that come to mind, in no particular order:1. Where there is a process you want them to adhere to, (1) make it clear why and how the results are used to create business value, ideally for them, but at a minimum why the company cares and (2) make it as easy as possible for them to do it, with some thoughtful reinforcement in ...Read More

My leadership team and I have attempted to define what world-class means in the RevOps/Sales Ops context. We started that exercise about a 1.5 years ago with a definition of our mission and vision. These are holding up well even as the context has changed.MISSION: Empower Intercom’s [now Fin's] GTM teams with the systems, insights, and strategies that drive predictable revenue growth and create exceptional customer experiences. VISION: Build a world-class revenue engine that ensures our GTM team ...Read More

We run a few different reviews for deals and pipeline, with everything culminating in an exec forecast and business discussion each Friday.1. Weekly forecast meetings provide insights on pacing, pipeline coverage, deal performance by "band" (i.e., small, run rate deals, medium, large, XL), key insights on any major deals, and the overall health of the business. This cascades up over the course of the week: team forecast (Manager-led) > segment forecast (Director-led, Sales Strategy & Ops ...Read More

Data quality is the eternal battle for sales ops and related teams. It's never been perfect, never will be perfect. But, getting it as good as possible is a joint effort. We have data engineering teams that help build systems that check and recheck data (deduplication, conflicting information, scrubbing outdated information, and running regular enrichment processes). My team advises on the use of third party data sources (often via Clay) and then will execute incorporation of those in some cases ...Read More

I assume the tension you are talking about here is with deal terms like discount, contract structure, opt-outs, etc.We have tried hard to set up policies that provide guardrails around common issues whenever we can. It's much easier for our Deal Desk team or others to point to a rule and very calmly say "We don't do that" than to have to litigate the same requests over and over. So first and foremost, I'd encourage you to turn as much into policy as you can and write it down. Those tension momen ...Read More

I think there are a few things that are hard as you get more senior in any role, not just revenue operations.1. It can be a lonely job. Everyone else on your team has peers within the team so they can commiserate, share frustrations more openly (about you, among other things), work together, etc. I have responsibility for 45 people on my team, but also the authority to fire/promote/reassign and so on which means you're the only one at the end of the day. And while there are other VP peers I work ...Read More