AMA: LinkedIn Vice President of Global Sales Operations, SaaS, Akira Mamizuka on Building a Revenue Ops Team

Any Rev Ops team's responsibilities include a mix of "run" work (e.g. quota audits to ensure Reps will be paid correctly) and "build" work aimed at accelerating growth or increasing productivity. "Run" work is table stakes. If not executed on a timely and effectively manner, things literally break with impact in revenue, customer experience and team morale. The most common pitfall in this category is, because "run" work is so critical, teams tend to spend the majority of their time here, and not ...Read More

Rev Ops org design needs to consider multiple variables, such as the Sales Org structure and the remit of the Rev Ops team (for example, in some firms, quota setting is owned by Finance). Regardless of these variables, one aspect that is often a hot discussion topic is "span of control" for Rev Ops teams. In general, Rev Ops teams in companies that are past $100M in ARR should aim for a span of control of 1 Manager to 3 Individual Contributors. Higher spans of control hurt the ability for the Ma ...Read More

As one of my early mentors thought me, hiring is the most important thing I can do as a leader. Hiring high caliber individuals is the best predictor of success of a team. When hiring for new Rev Ops team members, we fundamentally look for candidates who demonstrate two traits: "Scientist" Distills complex data into a "so what". Understands cause-effect relationships. Natural problem solver. "Business leader" Challenges the status quo. Focus on what matters. Comfortable in making tough calls. A ...Read More

Three key considerations when growing the Rev Ops team: Separate work between "horizontal" (i.e.; it common work across all segments and regions of the business such as quota modeling) and "vertical" (i.e.; work that is focused on a specific segment or sub-region such as Sales territory design and bottom-up forecasting). "Horizontal" work is better done centrally by a single sub-team, which creates leverage and maximum efficiency. "Vertical" work benefits from dedicated focus and deep expertise ...Read More

A junior hire who is the first Rev Ops hire is an exciting role to be. They will lay the foundations for the company to grow and scale. However, this is also a chaotic role. At such an early stage, the company likely has gaps in processes, systems, tools, training and reporting, just to name a few areas. The first Rev Ops hire will be pulled in multiple directions to close those gaps. Here's some advice I would share with them: Be intentional about the mix of your time spent between "run" and "b ...Read More