AMA: Paycor Vice President, Revenue Operations, Brian Vass on Revenue Ops Soft and Hard Skills

In my opinion, soft skills are more imporatnt than hard in this role; however, there are a few hard skills that are important: * Practical sales and/or marketing experience. It's important that you can resonate and empathize with the teams you are supporting. This also provides credibility. * Strong experience with CRM and related technologies. My deep knowledge and expreience of Salesforce, Marketo, and other sales/marketing tools is a big reason I've been successful in this role. * Experience with budgeting and data analysis. RevOps leaders need practical experience telling stories through data to enable the org to make better business decisions.

* Ensure that associates are working on challenging projects * Recognize the positive impact they are having on the business * Provide meaningful feedback on a regular basis. We have quarterly "Connects" to share accomplishments, areas for improvement, goals for the next quarter, and development opportunities. * With a virtual team, it's extra important to communicate what's going on in the business and provide the opportunity to ask questions. I have weekly team meetings and individual 1:1s. * Invest in continuing education -- conferences, online training, or whatever is appealing to the associate * Have some fun! Happy hours, team outings, etc.

RevOps professionals have a lot to offer other parts of the business. They have valuable experience driving GoToMarket strategies, improving processes, leveraging technology to improve productivity, using data to tell stories, and much more. These are valuable skills that are easily transferrable to other parts of the business. In high-growth SaaS companies, bookings are king. As a result, sales/marketing typically gets the majotiry of budget for tools & tech. RevOps professionals can take the great experience they get in sales/marketing and apply it to other parts of the business that typically don't have similar resources. In fact, I am in the process of taking many of the best-practices we've implemented in sales/marketing and applying them to our customer implementation team.

Hard skills: * Sales or marketing experiance. Gives you credibility with your internal customers. * CRM and related technologies. It's important to understand best practices and use cases for your tech strategy. * Financial analysis and budgeting. Good RevOps leaders are data-driven. Soft skills: * Critical thinking * Problem solving * Teamwork and collaboration * Communication * Abandoning the status quo

That's a tough one. A few ideas: * Thank your boss for the feedback and ask him/her for suggestions on how to improve. Ask for specific examples. Ask "what are others doing that I am not?". If I were your boss in this example, I would want to know that you are struggling with the feedback so I can help provide clarity. * Find a mentor within the company (or potentially outside the company) that you can go to for advice. Share that you are struggling with the feedback and ask for ideas. A good mentor will be able to help. * If you have a peer that reports to the same leader, and you have a good realtionship, you can speak with him/her to see if they are getting similar feedback. They may be able to help interpret the feedback. 

It's tough to get hired into RevOps straight out of school. The best path to go straight into RevOps is to get an internship. We've had some amazing interns that joined us as full-time associates upon graduation. As an intern, you'll get valuable exposure to the organzation and can determine if RevOps is right for you. Other things I look for in recent graduates: * Business analytics courses * Strong Excel experience * Internship or other work experience that is data-driven and analytical * A demonstrated strong work ethic throughout school

I actually did both! Earlier in my career I was a marketing leader and was resonsible for demand generation. I was always passionate about leveraging technology and measuring the impact that marketing has on the business. I was an early adopter of Salesforce and Marketo, and leveraged these tools to show an ROI on our marketing campaigns. This experience made be a better RevOps leader because I understand how the marketing machine works and can support them through process, technology, and analytics. If you're in sales or marketing today, and love working with tech/data, consider a move to RevOps!

Soft skills are most important. Hard skills can be learned. The majority of my team did not have RevOps experience prior to joining Paycor. We have some amazing Salesforce and Marketo admins that had not used these apps in the past. Hire smart people that are quick learners and teach them what they need to know.

I've hired many RevOps professionals with diverse backgrounds. But they all have several things in common: * They are smart. RevOps can get complicated and you need smart people who can keep up. * They are quick learners. It's rare to hire individuals with practical RevOps experience. As a result, you need to find people who can learn quickly and make an impact. * They are analytical. Goes without saying, but a big component of RevOps is data/analytics. Need analytical thinkers thatvnot only can provide data, but provide insights into what the data is telling us. * They are problem solvers. RevOps in a fast-growing company is full of new challenges. Need people who can think creatively to solve problems and help the business scale.