AMA: Shopify Leader of Post-Sale Revenue Operations, Melissa Sinclair on Establishing a Revenue Ops Function Team

First and foremost, you need to understand what is important to your team(s) and the individuals within it. At the end of the day, not everyone is motivated by the same thing(s). However, I have found usually someone's motivation will fall into one or combination of the following buckets: * Compensation: Offer competitive salaries and benefits that align with industry standards/for your size of a company. See where you can differentiate yourself with perks too. * Career Development: Provide clear career paths and growth opportunities for employees in revenue operations. Folks hate hitting a glass ceiling! Ensure individuals have the opportunity to acquire new skills relevant to their roles. * Recognition: Recognize and appreciate the contributions of your team. Acknowledges their achievements and milestones. This can look like a shoutout in a public setting, a 1-on-1 note of appreciation or creating an "awards" program. * Positive Work Environment: Culture matters. You can have the best role in the world on paper but if you can't stand the people you work with, it all goes out the window pretty quick. Foster a positive and inclusive work environment. Empower your team to share their ideas and contribute to decision-making processes. Create a culture that values diversity and belonging. * Regular Feedback: Do regular performance reviews. provide constructive feedback to help your team grow and improve. Feedback is a gift. This should go both ways too (ie. you asking for feedback from your team on what you can do better or more of also). * Continually Build Your Bench: Even with all of the above, you are going to lose people. This happens. Ensure you are in a continuous networking phase so you have "built a bench" of potential candidates when you get in a position you do need to hire quick.

I usually go through the following flow... 1. Current State: Know the current state. Identify the gaps, pain points, and areas for improvement. Use the data where you can here. You need to gain both qualitative and quantitative feedback on the current systems/processes/tools/etc for a holistic picture. 2. Align with Business Goals: Understand the company's overall business goals and objectives. Collaborate with key stakeholders to align revenue operations with these goals, ensuring its relevance and impact. 3. Prioritize: Based on the prior two, you should be able to start narrowing down. From there look at level of effort to impact. What metric would each priority be going after? Stack rank with those, then get some feedback from stakeholders. 4. Critical Needs: Somethings are just obvious. They are so broken they are causing a massive "bleed" in the business OR knowing you can only get so far if you don't have some fundamentals established. Identify those critical needs such as implementing a CRM system if it doesn't exit, establishing ROEs, funnel reporting, etc. I would check out my answer to 30/60/90 day plans too (haven't figured out how to link it). But that may also be helpful here

My specific team is focussed on post-sales revenue operations. We are structured around a few aspects: 1. The Craft: Meaning merchant facing roles (ex. Customer Success, Sales, etc). My team is first split by that grain so they can really get to know the roles of those areas and develop strong stakeholder relationships to build the best process/systems/etc they can. 2. Segment: The second grain they are structured to is customer segment. The customer experience can differ greatly between segments depending on how many you have, size of those segments, and difference in the customer base avatar of those segments. (Ex. I have someone on my team that leads Customer Success Operations for Segment A while I have another person that leads Customer Success Operations for Segment B). This structure has really allowed the team to become highly impactful and to be able to ship impactful work quick while staying in tune with multiple teams for their areas.

A few things come to mind for me when reading this, I've worked both at small and large companies. This is what I've noticed: 1. Scope: The scope of responsibilities is often narrower due to limited resources in a small company. Ex. could be you have enablement individual/team, process optimization focussed individual/team. At a large company may involve multiple teams, complex processes, and a broader range of functions, including various enablements teams, role specific operations (ie. marketing ops, sales ops, etc), go-to-market ops, etc. 2. Resources: Small companies typically have limited resources (ie. budget, personnel, tools, etc). Revenue ops in a small company will require individuals to wear multiple hats. You have less spots to delegate too also. So ruthless prioritization is always important regardless of company size...but extremely critical at a smaller company for this reason. In larger companies, there are more resources available to invest in specialized roles so these individuals can go deep in their craft and truly become a high level SME of their area. (ex. CS Ops individual can be aligned to a specific customer segment to focus on and therefore they can know the ins and outs of that space) 3. Cross-Functional Collaboration: In a small company, you should have close collaboration and coordination between different departments due to the smaller organizational structure. Communication and alignment between teams can be easier. In larger companies, you're dealing with more stakeholders and cross-functional teams...you're going to have to get in place more structured collaboration methods due to the volume/complexity at play. 4. Adaptability: With a small company you usually can be more agile. You can quickly respond to market changes, experiment with new strategies, and make adjustments based on feedback. With a large company on the other hand, you're going to have more established processes and structures, which can make it challenging to implement changes or adapt quickly...the ripple effects or dependencies on a change can span much wider. 5. Data: A large company typically has access to more extensive data sets and advanced analytics capabilities. You can leverage data-driven insights to make informed decisions and optimize revenue operations. In small companies, data may be limited, and analytics capabilities may be more basic. Establish what you can at a small one and just look at continuing to improve it. "Data is king".

I suggest you follow something like below. You will have to adapt this accordingly to size of the company and where it is at in operational maturity. But the following themes should be able to apply to different degrees when coming into a Startup that doesn’t already have an operations team established. ps. The First 90 Days by Watkins is a great book! 30-Day Plan: Get curious/Discovery Time to be a sponge. Get incredibly curious and go into deep discovery. 1. Understand the Customer: Gain insights into customer needs and preferences by shadowing customer calls or listening to recordings. This will help you understand their pain points and identify areas of opportunity. Including sales to understand how they sell the product 2. Build Relationships: schedule meetings with stakeholder teams (ie. product, sales, marketing, talent, etc) to establish strong internal relationships and collaboration channels. 3. Roadshow/Value Prop: Educate your company on the role you are here to execute and how different teams can collaborate with you. How can you help them? How can they help you? 4. Process Evaluation: Review existing operational processes, systems and tech stack. Start spotlighting areas of inefficiency and ineffectiveness, see if there are any quick wins that can be made. 5. Data Analysis: Familiarize yourself with available data related to Opex, P&L, and success metrics of merchant-facing teams. This will provide valuable insights for building effective processes and systems. 60-Day Plan: Plan & Stakeholder 1. Strategic Plans/Roadmap: Based on your learnings, create a comprehensive plan for the next quarter and year. Prioritize key initiatives and share your plan broadly to gather feedback and make necessary adjustments. Get some low hanging fruit into this that you can knock off early and show quick impact. 2. Talent Plan: Develop a hiring plan. At a startup this may not be a robust hiring plan right away but you likely will need some heads to help execute your prior point (ie. your strategic plan). 3. Stakeholder Map: Define and start implementing your ongoing stakeholder map. How are you connecting, frequency, on what topics, etc. Continue to learn from them and share your plans. 90-Day Plan: Execute & Feedback Loops 1. Execute/Refine: Focus on executing your plan. Refine processes, systems, and strategies based on feedback and insights gathered during the initial period. You want to show you can deliver and make a positive impact. 2. Communicate Progress: Foster alignment and support by regularly sharing updates on your plan, progress, and accomplishments with the broader organization. Transparent communication will ensure everyone is informed and engaged. 3. Data!: Ensure you are continuously working to get the data you need and presented in a way you can get quick insights. With a startup this can be a challenge at times but continually push to get what you can so you can stay objective.

Check out some of my thoughts on a related question here :)

Check out some thoughts here :)

I think there are a few critical aspects to look at (and I would echo this even if it wasn't a small but growing team ;) ): * Understand the Current State: Begin by thoroughly understanding the existing revenue operations process. Identify pain points, bottlenecks, and areas for improvement. Gather insights from team members and stakeholders to gain a holistic view. You can't build a great future state until you understand the current state and its issues/opportunities. It is SO critical that if this "small but growing company" has not yet thought about segmentation, you begin thinking about this too and strategizing what that should look like. * Align with Business Goals: Ensure that the revenue operations process aligns with the overall business goals and objectives. Collaborate with key stakeholders to understand their expectations and priorities. You want to make sure your priorities are aligned nicely with the "North Star" goals/visions. * Streamline and Automate: Look for opportunities to streamline and automate manual tasks within the revenue operations process. Identify repetitive or time-consuming activities that can be automated using tools or technology. Make your teams more efficient and effective. * Implement Data-Driven Decision Making: Emphasize the importance of data in the revenue operations process. Establish key metrics and reporting mechanisms to track performance and make informed decisions. Leverage data analytics to identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement. This can look like funnel reporting, P&L, Opex, etc. One of the biggest lesson I've learned through the years is establish your data/reporting early. * Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Revenue operations involves multiple teams and functions, you are often going to be the "glue" between teams. Foster collaboration and communication across these teams to ensure alignment and a seamless flow of information. Careful about putting yourself in a spot you become the bottleneck of updates/comms. Help establish sharing/update rituals that can scale. * Improve the Tech Stack: Explore and leverage technology solutions that can support and enhance the ops process. This could include CRM systems, marketing automation tools, data analytics platforms, etc. Choose tools that align with your specific needs and budget. * Go To Market Plan: If there is not already an established plan for how to go to market with new features/products/etc at this company, create that process. What needs to happen before a customer even hears about the new product/feature? What enablement is needed for customer facing teams? What tracking must be in place? Etc.

Check out some thoughts here :)