Question Page

What are the fundamental differences between a revenue operations manager and a senior revenue operations manager?

2 Answers
Shirin Sharif
Shirin Sharif
Adobe Sr. Director, Revenue OperationsNovember 16

Titles mean different things at different companies, so I'll answer the question more along the skills you need to be promoted to more senior roles within revenue Ops. 

The big skill is the ability to think big and think ahead. It's very easy to spend your entire week or month fire fighting as a line manager. As you grow your role and scope, you need to allocate time to think about the future and innovate. How can the company accelerate growth? Reduce costs? How does the team further the goals of the business? How do we measure the strategic programs? How do you retain and develop talent? These are questions that great managers start thinking about and they are table stakes for "senior managers / directors."

4031 Views
Mollie Bodensteiner
Mollie Bodensteiner
Sound Agriculture Revenue Operations LeaderDecember 14

I think the fundamental difference between a senior and a non-senior operations role centers around these core competencies:

  1. Proactivity and stakeholder management: A senior manager should be able to operate on projects autonomously with stakeholders and proactively drive output, where a manager generally needs some additional support in these functions. As well as close out a project with insights and data to drive action vs building reports (I would expect a senior to drive decisions with data and closed-loop analytics)

  2. Systems & technical acumen: A senior manager typically is completely ramped on the stack and can apply knowledge immediately whereas a manager might still be ramping on best practices, etc. (this is an experience lever)

  3. Typical ramp time: In hiring a difference in my mind between a senior and a manager is the time for the ramp - the amount of industry knowledge, product knowledge, general business acumen, and experience in executing the goals we are focused on achieving. I would expect a senior to be fully ramped in 3 months whereas a manager is probably closer to 6 months

397 Views
Top Revenue Operations Mentors
Tyler Will
Tyler Will
Intercom VP, Sales Operations
Ignacio Castroverde
Ignacio Castroverde
Cisco Senior Director, Global Virtual Sales Strategy and Operations
Ken Liu
Ken Liu
Databricks Director - Sales Strategy & Operations
Akira Mamizuka
Akira Mamizuka
LinkedIn Vice President of Global Sales Operations, SaaS
Sid Kumar
Sid Kumar
HubSpot SVP, Revenue Operations (RevOps)
Azim Mitha
Azim Mitha
HubSpot Interim Sales Director (Asia)
Lindsay Rothlisberger
Lindsay Rothlisberger
Zapier Director, Revenue Operations
Shirin Sharif
Shirin Sharif
Adobe Sr. Director, Revenue Operations
Bridget Hudacs
Bridget Hudacs
Knowledge Vortex Salesforce Functional Analyst
Michael Hargis
Michael Hargis
Tealium SVP, Revenue Operations