What should you aim to do in your first month and your first quarter?

In the first month I would aim to meet with my key stakeholders, understand some of their recurring pain points and try to address 1-2 of those pain points right-away (<30 days) to develop trust. This is likely to be a balancing act since you want to be careful about unintended consequences and not committing to a short-term fix that could create potential issues in the long run.

From there on out, I would focus on meeting with extended (cross-functional) stakeholders and understand the political landscape within the organization i.e. where does the decision making lie, who can help/support your priorities, who do people trust, where are the potential landmines and start to develop those long-term relationships.

In your first month, you should not only be building a great understanding of the product and business, but also what the company's go-to-market looks like across the business. Aim to understand the relationship between your key GTM functions (Sales, Marketing, Customer Success) and identify opportunities to build connection both within and across these functions while building relationships with each of these teams.

Over your first quarter, you should start to build out a list of priorities focused around:

• Breaking down potential silos between go-to-market functions (in particular Sales<>Marketing and Sales<> CS) - are these teams talking to each other and understand how their work relies on and impacts the other functions?

• Identify core KPIs across functions and assessing if they are the right ones. But in particular, do you have success metrics that help you understand the flow of the customer journey? For example, do you have a metric that helps you understand if Marketing is driving quality leads for Sales and they are turning into revenue?

• Communicating to leadership where you see opportunities and recommendations to identify gaps in your ops functions across the customer journey.

When starting a new rev ops role where the function did not exist previously, the most important step will be to align on the remit and priorities of the rev ops function. I would look at 4 core aspects: Strategy, Operations, Data & Systems, and Team & Talent and then determine the priorities to tackle first across those areas. 

1.       Strategy: If you are a brand new rev ops team, you need to start by asking what are the problems we need to solve for the business? What will be in the remit of Rev Ops? You'll want to spend time building out your priorities and aligning on them with relevant stakeholders.  

2.       Operations: Take a look at the current processes needed to operate the functions you support. For sales, this could look like understanding the acquisition funnel, the forecast process, rules of engagement and compensation. Understand who owns each of those and where the noise in current processes is coming from. Determine if any changes to existing processes or new processes need to be part of your priorities.

3.       Data & Systems: Rev ops won't succeed without solid data and systems. Learn your tech stack and spend time understanding what's working well and what isn't. Ask about data infrastructure, who owns it? How reliable is it? Is it missing critical information?  Should there be a rev ops priority for systems enhancements or data foundation investments?

4.       Team & Talent: You will need a solid team to help you execute the Rev Ops priorities. Who is on your current team? Do they have the skills you need to tackle your priorities? Do you need additional resourcing? Understand the process to ask for additional headcount on the team. Then think beyond your core team. Who are the cross functional partners you work with regularly? Do you need more from them?                              

Also including a link to a framework that has worked well for me as you progress across 30/60/90 days. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KOCTEDa_ezcSW0lUOgvQCt4csqunc7gg7n5VyAHb3Hw/edit?usp=sharing