What are the most important skills (both tactical and intangible) that are must-have for revenue operations managers?

Question

Blake Cummins · Accepted Answer

To be successful in revenue operations you must 1. have a data analysis foundation 2. be a strong problem solver and 3. be a good story teller.

1. Data foundation: the requirements will change depending on your company's tech stack (SQL, Tableau, SFDC, etc.), but you must have experience analyzing, visualizing and synthesize takeaways from data. Almost everything you do in rev ops must be data driven, and understanding how to pull actionable takeaways from large data sets is key.

2. Problem solving: Know different problem solving frameworks and apply them in your day to day to get experience with how they work. The most basic being 1. start with a hypothesis 2. test that hypothesis 3. debrief on results and iterate. It is also ok to test in an unscalable / manual / simple way. One of the biggest fallacies operators run into is trying to run the perfect test--use the 80/20 rule and be a scrappy problem solver

3. Story Telling: A large part of the rev ops role is aligning different teams (sales, marketing, product, finance, leadership, etc.) to work towards the same goal or on the same initiative--and story telling is a huge part of getting this cross-functional alignment. An operator needs to 1. get buy in (show the business impact and why the team should be excited to work on this) 2. clarify how the team is going to execute (demonstrate a well thought out plan with deadlines and DRIs) 3. assign ownership (identify who is responsible for each aspect of the plan).

Shirin Sharif · Answer

The hard skills are table stakes: ability to analyze data and turn data into insights

The most important soft skill, and the x-factor in my opinion, is having a thick skin. This is a thankless role at times, where you get blamed when things are wrong but get minimal or no credit when the sales team is on track. It takes a certain type of personality to be okay with that.

Other important soft skills are around stakeholder management, cross-functional collaboration, and executive presence. You'll be working directly with VPs across sales and other functions so you need to be able to have a point of view and share it articulately and succinctly, while also displaying empathy and compassion with the sales team.

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