How do you handle disagreements between Sales and Revenue Ops teams on strategy or tactics?

Disagreements between Sales and Revenue Ops on strategy or tactics often stem from differing views on how best to utilize each other's time to meet business objectives. It's crucial to recognize that our stakeholders—our business partners—have their own incentives and priorities. Sales leaders carry the significant responsibility of hitting their targets, a sense of urgency that RevOps teams might not intrinsically feel to the same extent.

When disagreements arise, I encourage RevOps teams to ask themselves: Is the initiative we're proposing going to fundamentally improve the Sales team's ability to close deals? If the answer is no, it's understandable that Sales might resist investing time and effort into a new strategy that doesn't directly enhance their revenue-generating capabilities.

That said, RevOps supports more than just Sales—we also collaborate with Marketing, Customer Success, Finance, and Product teams. Each may request initiatives that involve Sales, such as improving customer onboarding or gathering product feedback. These projects might not have immediate, apparent benefits for Sales but contribute to the organization's overall health.

In these cases, top-down alignment is essential. We need a clearly articulated organizational strategy—a "North Star" that everyone is working toward. For example, if improving gross retention is a priority, and enhancing customer onboarding is the chosen path to achieve that, leadership must align on deliverables that will materially impact renewals.

We can connect this back to Sales by emphasizing that healthier customers are more likely to renew and expand their partnerships, providing fertile ground for Account Executives to hit their targets. It's about shifting the conversation from "Here's what we need to do" to "Here's why this benefits you." When we illustrate the downstream impacts on Sales' objectives, alignment becomes much more attainable, allowing us to collaboratively design and execute effective strategies.