AMA: Shopify Senior Revenue Operations Lead, Melissa Sinclair on Stakeholder Management

I tailor stakeholder management by mapping who they are, what they care about, and how they want to engage—then I match the message, artifact, and cadence to that profile. These are steps I have used repeatedly for developing stakeholder relationships and managing them: Map stakeholders: note influence/interest, goals, risks, preferred channel/cadence, time zone, and bandwidth—this sets how often you update them, what you share, and the level of detail. Tailor the message: execs (outcomes/ROI/ri ...Read More

Regardless of function, building a better relationship requires a level of trust. One of the best ways to do this is understanding one another and their functions, get curious. You want to make it safe to tell the truth, define what “good” looks like, and be explicit about commitments and tradeoffs. Share your constraints, ask for theirs, and treat clarity as a kindness and accountability as a sign of respect. When people trust the process and know the rules, conflict becomes productive and spee ...Read More

Before being able to improve anything you need to understand why there is an issue in the first place. Get curious. Understand the context behind the historically tense relationship between the functions. What was at the root of this tension. Most “tension” I have seen is a byproduct of misaligned goals, fuzzy definitions, broken handoffs, and opaque data. RevOps is uniquely positioned to neutralize the emotions and redesign the operating system so both teams can win. Get to shared goals, shared ...Read More

Some high level principles of feedback overall to consider: Set the rules of engagement early: who gets to weigh in, by when, and how you’ll report back—then always close the loop so people see how their input was handled. Filter every comment through the objective: if it advances the core goal or mitigates real risk, it’s prioritized; if not, it goes to the parking lot for later. Use a principled “no”: explain the trade-off, tie it to the outcome you’re optimizing for, and keep moving. When it ...Read More

For remote alignment, keep it simple: shared clarity, trust, explicit decisions, and visible follow‑through: Anchor on clarity: purpose, values, work, strategy, top thematic goal, and roles - tie OKRs and roadmaps directly to them. Build trust and healthy conflict: set working agreements, invite dissent, rotate times for fairness, and push for objectiveness. Default to async and accountability: keep one source of truth, maintain a decision log, share brief weekly updates, cascade decisions, trac ...Read More