AMA: Intercom VP, Sales Operations, Tyler Will on RevOps Reporting

We use three tools for data and reporting: CRM (Salesforce), Clari, and Tableau. We also have Snowflake for the data warehouse but that's run by the Data Eng team in service of many teams beyond my Sales Ops team. Each of these serves a distinct purpose for us: CRM(Salesforce): We do foundational reporting and dashboards here. The primary audience for these is the Sales team (reps and front line managers) to let them track their in-quarter performance, see KPIs, manage their team and opportuniti ...Read More

I think about forecasting and making it effective in three large areas: (1) process, (2) tools/models, and (3) data. Without getting each of those right, no "perfect model" will make forecasting great. My experience forecasting at Intercom is different from what we did at LinkedIn so it's important to think about your specific context and needs before replicating any one forecasting approach. Process: At LinkedIn and Intercom, we run a forecasting cadence that met the needs of the business. This ...Read More

For internally generated data, I work with my team and the sales leaders to (1) set clear expectations, (2) reinforce the expectations, and (3) make it as easy as possible to meet the expectation. For external data sources, we work closely with other teams (Marketing Ops, Finance) to optimize our subscriptions and evaluate different data sources each year. Internal data At Intercom, we defined a set of rules around opportunity management that every rep and manager understands. We're always revis ...Read More

We talk - a lot. I think RevOps/Sales Ops teams get into trouble when they build things in a bubble and don't spend time working with the consumers of the information. As a leader in RevOps or Sales Ops, you are probably already having 1:1 meetings with the leaders in these other functions. Sometimes reporting or analytics needs will come up organically but other times you'll have to dig to find out what is and is not working for them. Either way, by engaging you get a better understanding of th ...Read More

We are still in the early days of this at Intercom but there are a few things we have introduced recently that I think all companies would benefit from. Forecasting / opportunity management: Nearly every sales tool we use (Salesforce, Gong, Clari, Outreach) includes some predictive analytics elements. I'd encourage everyone to start here and explore what you have already paid for and probably are not using to its full extent. These tools can help identify opportunities at risk, forecast trends, ...Read More

[Copied answer from another similar question] We talk - a lot. I think RevOps/Sales Ops teams get into trouble when they build things in a bubble and don't spend time working with the consumers of the information. As a leader in RevOps or Sales Ops, you are probably already having 1:1 meetings with the leaders in these other functions. Sometimes reporting or analytics needs will come up organically but other times you'll have to dig to find out what is and is not working for them. Either way, by ...Read More

We track 10-15 metrics closely at any time, but the ones that I think are most interesting to see the health of the business and identify where we should take action (either fix a problem or drive more growth) are below: ARR/Revenue - how much revenue is the business as a whole generating. We look at this both in sum and what's happened in the quarter. The primary shortcoming of this metric is that it is the outcome of numerous other processes rather than something we can directly influence, so ...Read More

Being able to point to initiatives driven by RevOps insights, in my opinion, is a good indicator of a healthy and productive team. If you don't have examples of this, you're probably entirely reactive and primarily producing reporting on questions other people asked of you. Here are a few in different categories: Investing in new technologies - RevOps or Sales Ops is well-positioned to identify when a process is inefficient or a data source inadequate or several tools could be consolidated to sa ...Read More

Maybe this is too simplistic of an answer, but the more you can standardize the output and keep it consistent from week to week or month to month, the easier it is to automate. My team works on a number of recurring reporting activities and we (and our partners on other teams) have really pushed to produce the same content as much as possible. That has allowed us to build dashboards, reports, scripts, and slide templates that we can quickly populate. Then, we invest our time in the insights (i.e ...Read More

I assume the balance you are asking about is the need for responsive/urgent reporting or other work with longer-term strategic thinking vs. just how do you get the reporting work done in ~50 hours per week. If you're struggling to get the urgent work done in ~50 hours, then you are some combination of under-resourced, inefficient (could be skills gaps or tools/data/process gap), and poorly prioritized and should work with your stakeholders to find some solutions. If this is about the balance of ...Read More

I think there are three main areas - data hygiene, forecasting, and exec readouts - we focus on to create transparency and accountability with my Sales Ops team at Intercom. Establish standards and enforce them for data hygiene - as I have described elsewhere in the AMA, we have expectations, a series of reports on hygiene compliance, and a weekly "cleanup" process that creates visibility into data quality and a means for sales teams to fix it. Drive good process for forecasting - also described ...Read More

This is a critical role of RevOps or Sales Ops teams but can be very challenging given the constant nature of any business and the questions/requests you get on a daily basis. Perhaps the most important way to do this is develop the ability (and the right) to say "no." You also need the right people on the team who have the skills and experience to be strategic, so think about what you're hiring for in each role. Finally, as a RevOps or Sales Ops leader, you need to have an open dialog with the ...Read More