AMA: Tegus Global Head of Revenue Strategy & Operations, Kayvan Dastgheib on Establishing the Revenue Ops Function

Retaining top-notch RevOps talent isn't as tricky as it might seem. At the end of the day, RevOps talent, like any other, sticks around when they feel valued and see opportunities for growth. Here's how to keep them engaged: 1. Recognition and Appreciation: * Shine the Spotlight: Make a point of recognizing and appreciating the hard work and contributions of your RevOps team. Often, they're the unsung heroes behind the scenes, making the revenue engine run smoothly. Highlight their achievements and let them take center stage. 2. Nurturing Growth Opportunities: * Lay Out Clear Paths: Acknowledge that RevOps roles are in high demand, with a rapid career trajectory. Offer clear career paths within the organization, allowing your RevOps talent to explore different aspects of the business and contribute meaningfully. * Continuous Learning: Provide avenues for continuous learning and skill development. Encourage them to broaden their expertise in areas related to revenue operations. 3. Cultivating Initiative and Ownership: * Foster a Culture of Initiative: Create an environment that encourages taking initiative. RevOps professionals are natural problem solvers. Empower them to take charge of challenges and drive solutions. * Sense of Ownership: Nurture a strong sense of ownership over their projects and responsibilities. RevOps talent often thrives when they feel deeply responsible for their work. 4. Valuing Their Input: * Treat Them as Business Partners: View your RevOps team as strategic business partners rather than merely receivers of directives. Actively seek their input and involve them in decision-making processes. * Investment in Stakeholder Success: When RevOps professionals feel personally invested in the success of their stakeholders, it becomes a catalyst for both their personal growth and the overall growth of the company. I dedicate time every week to evaluate how I am doing my part to deliver on the above on a consistent basis for the talent on my team. I have found that committing to these tenets creates an environment where RevOps professionals are not only motivated to stay but are also empowered to contribute significantly to the success of the organization.

Interestingly, the framework for prioritizing needs and deliverables as the inaugural Revenue Operations Manager revolves around the very essence of the job title. Your primary objective should be to identify and address the deliverables that empower your stakeholders in their mission to generate pipeline and revenue for the company. Start by immersing yourself in the company's sales methodology, marketing strategy, gain a deep understanding of the forecasting process, and dissecting the factors driving customer retention and expansion. Collaborate closely with your stakeholders to pinpoint the roadblocks hindering their ability to consistently meet go-to-market strategy objectives. In this process, you'll likely discover common themes where your efforts can make a significant impact. Here are some key areas to consider: 1. Health of the Business: Assess if there is common language and accessible data to calculate critical metrics like CAC, CAC Payback, LTV/CAC, Rule of 40, and the SaaS Magic Number. 2. Pipeline Coverage: Assess whether the organization has a clear understanding of pipeline coverage requirements to meet revenue targets consistently on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. Evaluate the channels that generate pipeline, their volumes, conversion rates. 3. Customer Satisfaction and Retention: Determine if there are defined leading and lagging indicators for measuring customer satisfaction and retention rates. Subjective health scores can still be very telling and a solid foundation for data driven approaches later. 4. ICP and Target Audience Framework: Assess if the organization has a clear understanding of its Total Addressable Market (TAM), Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and a framework to prioritize personas for both inbound and outbound marketing programs effectively (TAF). Determine if these definitions are aligned between Sales, Marketing, Customer Success and Product. As the first RevOps leader in the company, you'll likely be the driving force behind cross-functional initiatives aimed at providing strategic insights and clear direction in these areas. During your onboarding process, you might encounter a multitude of challenges, including data inconsistencies, technical debt, and process inefficiencies. Navigating this sea of work can be daunting, but it's crucial to prioritize effectively. Remember your most valuable resource to invest is your time. When faced with a new challenge, ask yourself whether it aligns with one of the fundamental themes mentioned above. If you can categorize the task under one of those critical themes, you can be confident that addressing it will deliver significant value to the company. In essence, the framework centers on aligning your efforts with the overarching goal of enabling revenue growth and focusing on areas that have the most substantial impact on your stakeholders' success.

Our revenue operations team consists of four key pillars: 1. Revenue Systems Team: This pillar is dedicated to managing Salesforce and other connecting technologies. The primary focus here is to ensure that our technology stack can scale effectively to meet the evolving needs of the business. This team plays a crucial role in optimizing our CRM system and integrating it with other tools to enhance efficiency and data accuracy. 2. Contracts Administration Team (Deal Desk): This team works closely with our sales organization to expedite the processing of quotes, proposals, and agreements. Their role is to ensure that these crucial documents are handled swiftly and consistently, enabling our sales teams to move deals forward efficiently. 3. Enablement Team: Our enablement team is responsible for change management across our customer success and sales teams. They partner with GTM leaders on implementing new processes, methodologies and tools in a thoughtful and proactive way. They collaborate closely with the product marketing department to equip our customer-facing teams with all the necessary resources and training needed to effectively deliver value to our clients. This ensures that our teams are well-prepared to meet customer needs. 4. Operations Analysts: This close-knit group serves as business partners for our go-to-market leaders. They play a pivotal role in executing the tactical elements of our strategy, planning the rhythm of business, and overseeing quarterly and yearly planning initiatives. Their work is essential for aligning our operations with our strategic objectives. As our organization continues to grow, we anticipate expanding these functions to further meet the evolving needs of our stakeholders. This structured approach ensures that we are well-equipped to drive revenue growth and operational excellence.

The biggest surprises for me fall into two buckets, Ownership of RevOps Responsibilities and how Salesforce has been implemented. 1. Ownership of "RevOps" Responsibilities: One of the biggest surprises is discovering who currently owns the responsibilities that are typically managed by RevOps. In companies with an established RevOps function, these responsibilities are well-defined and centralized. However, in organizations without RevOps, various teams may take on these tasks based on their maturity and priorities. For instance: * In companies lacking strong enablement functions, you might find product marketing heavily involved in creating collateral and transferring information to go-to-market teams. * Without a centralized contracting team and deal desk, finance teams may handle these roles. Investigating and learning where these responsibilities have landed across the organization is crucial. While you may have some initial assumptions, there are often unexpected areas where different teams have taken on revops-related tasks. 2. Salesforce Implementation and Creativity: Another significant surprise can be the creative ways each organization implements and uses Salesforce. No two Salesforce instances are identical, and you'll encounter variations in: * Opportunity architecture and layouts. * User provisioning. * Integrations with adjacent systems. * Configuration of products and price books. * Reports and dashboards design and usage. Each organization adapts Salesforce to its specific needs and processes, which can be quite different from your previous experiences. Strike a balance between the existing practices and the best practices you aim to implement as the company grows. Navigating these surprises requires a deep understanding of the organization's current state, which takes time and healthy dose of curiosity, a flexible approach to accommodate variations, and a clear vision for establishing revenue operations that align with the company's objectives and growth trajectory.

The most effective way to approach your first 30-60-90 days as a RevOps leader at a new company is to center your efforts on truly grasping the business dynamics and forging strong relationships with key stakeholders. Let's break down this structured approach: First 30 Days (Discovery and Relationship Building): * Learn the Business: Your initial month should be dedicated to immersing yourself in the company's story. Delve into its history, how it got to its present state, and where it aspires to be in the future. * Meet Key Stakeholders: This is your chance to meet and engage with all the major players multiple times. Engage with teams like sales, marketing, customer success, finance, HR, product, and other relevant departments. You want to build a comprehensive understanding of how the business operates and what challenges it faces. * Ask Questions: Don't shy away from asking questions, no matter how basic they may seem. Understanding the reasoning behind existing processes and practices is essential. * Build Relationships: The cornerstone of your RevOps success lies in the relationships you build during this period. Invest time in connecting with your colleagues, as these partnerships will be crucial moving forward. Days 31-60 (Documentation and Validation): * Codify Findings: Document everything you've gathered during your discovery phase. Create a cohesive narrative summarizing your insights and understanding of the business. This document can take the form of a comprehensive go-to-market summary or a RevOps 30-day retrospective. * Present Your Narrative: Share your documented findings with stakeholders. This is where you discuss your grasp of the business, its go-to-market strategy, how the product fits in, the hurdles to growth, pain points for customer-facing teams, and any insights you've gleaned. * Seek Feedback: Use this opportunity to validate your observations and seek clarification. It's vital to understand where stakeholders believe you can make the most impact. Days 61-90 (Alignment and Execution): * Double Down: Concentrate your efforts on areas where you've received confirmation and alignment from stakeholders. These are the spots where your actions will likely yield the most significant results. * Align with Stakeholders: Collaborate closely with stakeholders to devise an action plan. Define a loose timeline, outline the necessary steps, and identify the relevant stakeholders needed at each stage of your initiatives. * Project Planning: Develop project plans or timelines to ensure you can monitor progress and execute your initiatives effectively. This approach allows you to fully immerse yourself in the company's operations, cultivate strong relationships, and align your efforts with the organization's needs. Keep in mind that your understanding of the business and where you can make the most impact may evolve over time. Flexibility and openness to feedback are key to your success. Remember, each company is unique, and your 30-60-90 day plan should reflect the specific challenges and opportunities of your organization.

The earliest stage at which a startup should consider hiring a RevOps manager is often earlier than most organizations currently do. Startups naturally have individuals juggling the various responsibilities that eventually fall under a RevOps team's purview. It's vital to consider when it becomes logical to consolidate these tasks and initiatives, which initially operate in silos across different go-to-market teams. The signs that it's time to hire a RevOps manager typically emerge when the following areas become common discussion points: 1. Cross-Functional Collaboration: Startups start asking questions about how to foster cross-functional collaboration in their go-to-market initiatives. This collaboration becomes paramount for programs related to pipeline growth and customer retention. The question might be, "How can we enhance our inbound conversion rates?" "How do we build a better AE-CSM handoff?" 2. Integrated Tools: The need arises to ensure that tools are not just in place but also functioning seamlessly. This is where a RevOps manager can step in to streamline processes. This includes aligning marketing automation, CRM systems, and sales tools to work harmoniously. Often, the question revolves around simplifying the tech stack and addressing issues where tools were acquired but not optimally implemented. Or worse, buying tools for problems that already exist within the stack. 3. Standardized Business Language: Recognizing the significance of everyone in the organization speaking the same language when it comes to understanding business insights. This involves developing a shared understanding of critical growth drivers, funnel metrics, and scaling key performance indicators (KPIs). A common query is, "How do we unify Sales, Marketing, and Finance's definitions of an SQO/Win Rate/At Risk Customer?" 4. Effective Prioritization: The need becomes evident to ruthlessly prioritize tasks on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. RevOps helps establish not just the "rhythm of business" but also calibrates business partners on what's happening now, what's coming next, and what's planned for later. This involves addressing questions like, "What are the critical priorities, and what are the smaller tasks we need to tackle to launch this new partnership and its value to our customers?" In many startup scenarios, these functions are initially assigned to existing team members across various departments. While this might serve as a temporary fix, it often results in misalignment and inconsistent change management. As the organization grows, the need for a centralized RevOps perspective becomes apparent for efficient and scalable operations. Delaying the hiring of a dedicated RevOps manager can put a startup behind the curve when it comes to scaling. It might require them to play catch-up hastily, impacting the organization's ability to pivot toward new growth strategies, such as redesigning a go-to-market organization or entering new markets. This acceleration phase can be challenging, as it involves reviewing, renovating, and sometimes completely overhauling artifacts of previous business processes. Establishing RevOps earlier can help avoid these hurdles and set the foundation for smoother growth.

It's crucial to recognize that the demand generation team is a critical stakeholder in revenue operations, just like sales, and customer success. Effective cross-functional collaboration begins with taking the time to understand the demand generation strategy—how it has evolved and where its leaders envision it heading. 1. Building Trust and Understanding: * The first step in working effectively with the demand generation team is to establish trust and demonstrate that you comprehend their vision, challenges, and goals. This partnership is built on trust and confidence that you're aligned with their objectives. 2. Revenue Operations as the Connective Tissue: * Revenue operations plays a unique role as the bridge between marketing and sales. It provides a platform for establishing common language and understanding around key metrics such as lead flow, conversion rates, pipeline attribution, target audiences, Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), and qualified opportunities. 3. Shared Business Objectives: * Commonly shared KPIs should be rooted in shared business objectives. Begin by identifying the least common denominator among cross-functional go-to-market teams and expand from there. * For example, start with the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and define its purpose, measurement criteria, and expectations for its progression into a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) and eventually an opportunity. Clarify what constitutes a Sales Qualified Opportunity (SQO) and how to quantify its value. 4. Alignment on Expectations: * The challenge often lies in aligning the expectations of each team to meet the shared KPIs. To address this: * Involve your marketing partners early and consistently in the planning process. Avoid presenting KPIs as a final decision without their input. * Collaborate during fiscal year planning and quarterly target evaluations. Engage demand generation leaders to assess assumptions, expectations, and business needs at every step. Ensuring that demand generation leaders have a seat at the table when defining KPIs and aligning on targets is paramount. It allows for a more thorough examination of assumptions and promotes a uniformly aligned approach to achieving common goals.

Distinguishing between Marketing Operations and Revenue Operations talent is an interesting topic because it's essential to understand that RevOps is not merely a rebranding of SalesOps. Both Marketing Ops and SalesOps talent are vital components of RevOps, but they possess distinct skill sets and areas of expertise. Marketing Ops talent differs from Sales Ops talent in that they are specialists in the entire marketing funnel. Much like Sales Ops, their objective is to ensure that their stakeholders' strategies and operations are data-driven, efficient, and customer-centric. However, Marketing Ops professionals bring specific skills to the table: * Funnel Expertise: Go-to authority on all things related to the marketing funnel, applying deep knowledge to maximize the reach, impact and value of marketing programs. * Database Mastery: Diligent management of the marketable database, ensuring its deliverability and maintaining stringent data governance, health, and accuracy. Also ensure compliance with all relevant regulations and best practices. * Segmentation and Profiling: Continuously refine segmentation and profiling capabilities to better understand and target the audience, thereby refining and enhancing the impact of messaging. * Campaign Operations Excellence: Provide best in class campaign operations, focusing on the architecture, activation, attribution, and execution of each campaign to ensure its success. * Marketing Technology Strategy: Responsible for the careful selection, effective implementation, seamless integration, and robust infrastructure of the marketing technology used across the organization. Regarding the integration of Marketing Ops alongside SalesOps, CSOps and Enablement - there's a case for both options. Some organizations consolidate them into a unified RevOps team, while others maintain separate teams. The decision should align with the organization's unique needs and priorities. Some arguments for that decision: * Unified RevOps Team: Bringing Marketing Ops under the single RevOps umbrella can foster collaboration and alignment between marketing, sales and customer success more proactively. It ensures a holistic view of revenue generation, breaks down silos, and enhances efficiency. * Shared Metrics: RevOps can more effectively shepherd the conversations that establishes common language for the business that reflect the entire revenue generation process. * Technology Integration: Ensure marketing, sales and customer success technologies are integrated to provide a seamless customer journey.