How do you retain good talent, especially when revenue operations roles are in such high demand across the industry?

There obviously is not a one-size-fits-all approach here, but the way I think about this boils down to a few things:

• Create and foster a culture of learning and collaboration amongst your team, and enable folx to solve interesting problems together without someone constantly looking over their shoulder. When your team is learning and growing together with autonomy, that can sometimes be a tough thing to recreate somewhere else.
• Expanding on that, top talent will always value autonomy and trust in their work. I lean towards giving my team almost too much autonomy - the best way for them to learn is to learn from mistakes and figuring things out on their own, but it's also an important skill to know when to ask for help.
• Advocate tirelessly for your team and your top talent - that can apply to comp/promotions, visibility and exposure at a big company, or giving frequent positive and constructive feedback. I've been really lucky to have worked for managers who have advocated tirelessly for me and as an employee I really valued that. Working with a manager who knows your skillset and body of work well is super valuable so make it clear to your team how much you value them and then execute on that.

This is a great question - so many things about talent retention have to do with the company as a whole vs. things that I have control over on the operations team. So the first thing is to join a company that aligns with your values and where you believe in the mission and leadership; retention is much easier if it’s a great place to work! On the ops team in particular - make sure your team is working on projects that interest them, that they have a voice in setting their roadmap and OKRs and that you share context from other business units with your team to highlight the importance and impact of the work they’re doing. Also, if there are parts of the job that someone is particularly averse to (e.g. software procurement/negotiations) step in or offer support so they can do more impactful work. Unless it’s a key responsibility of their role, doing some lifting on those ‘less exciting’ tasks can go a long way. Finally, run defense for your team whenever possible so they have less thrash and can focus on their work and not on bureaucracy or fire drills.

Revenue operations demands a wide skill set that leads to a wide range of tasks as well as demanding career ladders. Additionally, revenue operations has the propensity to become low autonomy due to its nature in assisting numerous teams. Managing these challenges is essential to retaining top revenue operations talent.

Here are some ideas to improve retention:

• Understand both what interests the employee, but also what disinterests them
• If you can do it genuinely, reframe work outside of the employee’s interests by tying it to things that excite them more.
• For example, let’s say there’s admin work to be done around Opportunities in Salesforce but the employee's interest lies in data management. Ask the employee to lean on their interests to ask if there is an opportunity to increase data integrity or collect new data points of interest to the business. Give them the opportunity to complete this project while adding to its value by using their interests.
• Make sure to hire employees with varying interests, not just varying skill sets
• Career ladders should not demand excellency in all areas of revenue operations. RevOps spans data management, data analysis, tooling, strategy, and project management. You can create a more general career ladder with all important RevOps competencies and work with the employee to identify which are the most relevant for their career advancement
• For example, I have a career ladder with competencies in Data Insights, Project Management, Strategy, Tooling, and Leadership. The combination of any two leads to a powerful employee and as the team expands, their mastery will be more important than their generalist abilities. Reach out to me if you want to see this career ladder.
• Projects and ideas sourced within revenue operations can fall by the wayside if there’s too much emphasis on supporting other teams. The best way to support other teams is to give them perspective on the gaps across all go-to-market teams and what projects revenue operations can own to accelerate revenue growth. The cherry on top is this creates more autonomy for employees and increases retention.

• 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.