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What do you look for in a RevOps leader who can genuinely partner with Sales rather than just police it?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • Jun 11

I look for someone who understands the field, not just the dashboard.The best RevOps leaders are data-driven, but they're also commercially minded. They understand what s...

351 Views

What's the fastest way to kill a RevOps initiative before it even gets started?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • Jun 11

Trying to do too much, too fast, without a clear business outcome.The fastest way to kill a RevOps initiative is to turn it into a massive transformation program with too...

347 Views

What's the one pipeline metric most SMB sales leaders are measuring wrong?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • Jun 11

Pipeline size. And I know that sounds a little controversial, because of course you need enough pipeline.The issue is that too many SMB sales leaders look at pipeline cov...

328 Views

How do you get field sellers to trust the data coming out of RevOps when they think they know their territory better than any dashboard?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • Jun 11

This is probably my favorite question because sellers are often right: they do know their territory, customers, and partners better than any dashboard ever will.The mista...

346 Views

Where does the Sales–RevOps relationship most commonly break down, and what's your fix?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • Jun 11

The relationship usually breaks down when RevOps becomes the reporting police, or when we ask Sales to change the way they work without bringing them along for the journe...

332 Views

How do you decide what lives in the Program Office versus what belongs in Sales Operations?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • Jun 11

For me, the distinction is pretty simple.Sales Operations owns the business of today. The Program Office owns building the business of tomorrow.Sales Ops should be focuse...

322 Views

When you think about "revenue acceleration," what does that actually mean in practice versus how most companies define it?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • Jun 11

Most companies think revenue acceleration means more pipeline, faster. That's part of it. But it's a pretty narrow way to look at it.To me, it's about removing friction a...

340 Views

How do you align Sales and RevOps around a single revenue number at the SMB/Mid-Market level?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • Jun 11

One principle first: there can only be one number. Sales, RevOps, and Finance can each come in with their own inputs, but everyone needs to be looking at the same revenue...

373 Views

What role does forecasting play in aligning Sales and Revenue Ops objectives?

Kayvan Dastgheib-Beheshti

Payscale VP, GTM Operations & Business Intelligence • 1y

Forecasting is foundational in aligning Sales and Revenue Ops objectives. It requires both teams to be closely synchronized in how they measure, monitor, and act upon pip...

720 Views

How do you ensure that Revenue Ops is staying ahead of Sales needs and market trends?

Alexa D'Sa

HubSpot Senior Director, Sales Operations & Strategy • 3mo

Rev Ops should be balancing internal and external perspectives to stay ahead of trends.For external, think: What’s going on in my industry?What’s going on in my function?...

419 Views

How do you handle conflicting priorities between Sales and Revenue Ops teams?

Alexa D'Sa

HubSpot Senior Director, Sales Operations & Strategy • 3mo

Cultivating sales ownership is critical here.An example I’ve seen is a Sales VP wanting to push an operational improvement that the Ops team didn’t think was urgent / imp...

436 Views

How do you balance short-term Sales goals with long-term Revenue Operations strategies?

Alexa D'Sa

HubSpot Senior Director, Sales Operations & Strategy • 3mo

Agile prioritization and scoping are the key.For example next week we have a review for two product lines that will bring up long term strategic implications for our GTM...

442 Views

What key metrics do you use to measure the effectiveness of Sales and Revenue Ops alignment?

Alexa D'Sa

HubSpot Senior Director, Sales Operations & Strategy • 3mo

This is a great question and hard to measure well.I would say minimizing number of escalations would tell you alignment is working well - that would mean sales and Rev Op...

403 Views

What processes have you implemented to improve communication between Sales and Revenue Ops teams?

Alexa D'Sa

HubSpot Senior Director, Sales Operations & Strategy • 3mo

I would think about processes as aligned to different audiences.For reps and managers, scaled comms such as integrating into existing newsletters tend to work in my exper...

433 Views

What’s the benefit of having a deal desk that involves sales / finance / legal etc and how do you keep this from slowing deals down?

Mollie Bodensteiner

SVP of Operations | Formerly Engine, Sound, Deel, Marketo, Syncari • 4mo

A well-run deal desk doesn't slow deals down, it speeds them up by making "can we do this?" a policy question instead of a five-team fire drill. The thing that kills most...

372 Views

How do you get finance to allocate budget to programs that we haven’t proven out yet, but are experimental?

We recently brought on a CFO and they are asking us to add timelines for ROI to many of the programs that have not yet begun (like influence marketing).

Bridget Hudacs

Knowledge Vortex Salesforce Functional Analyst • 1y

If you are doing an experiment, then you should have a hypothesis that you are testing.To justify budget for this experiment, you need to share your hypothesis and test m...

548 Views

How can one redefine forecasting process where forecasting accuracy is off limits and very hard to accurately forecast revenue ?

Mollie Bodensteiner

SVP of Operations | Formerly Engine, Sound, Deel, Marketo, Syncari • 4mo

Honestly, if your forecasting is consistently off, the problem usually isn't the forecast. You're probably measuring the wrong thing. Stop trying to nail a single number ...

413 Views

How do you create a strong partnership between RevOps and Finance?

Ken Liu

Redis Director - Global Sales Strategy & Operations | Formerly Databricks, Google • 10mo

Forging a strong relationship with Finance has been instrumental in increasing the impact of my RevOps teams through unlocking budget for projects and feedback on analysi...

647 Views

How do we get finance to consult with us before cutting budget from customer success and marketing?

Our finance team substantially cut the budget without our input.

Tyler Will

Intercom VP, Revenue Operations | Formerly LinkedIn • 11mo

This can be a tough situation for you and for finance, and how this works will vary by company and situation. First, I would be empathetic to the finance team driving bud...

526 Views

Do you specialize your team members in Operations for specific functions (e.g. Sales vs. Marketing Ops)?

Andrew Kodner

Bazaarvoice VP, Revenue Operations | Formerly Amazon Web Services (AWS), RingCentral, Marin Software, Riverbed, Oracle, Siebel, Hyperion • 3y

Specialization is important when it helps team members dive deeper to solve problems and better understand the teams they support. That extra level of expertise enables ...

100 Views

What's your advice on improving a historically tense relationship between functions?

Melissa Sinclair

Shopify Senior Revenue Operations Lead • 7mo

Before being able to improve anything you need to understand why there is an issue in the first place. Get curious. Understand the context behind the historically tense r...

621 Views

How have you found success managing stakeholder relationships when there’s a wide gap in communication styles?

Lauren Davis

BuildOps VP, Revenue Operations • 2y

I’m not sure if this is in regards to a wide gap between how you communicate vs. the stakeholder, or a wide gap in how multiple stakeholders who you manage communicate. O...

1,071 Views

How do you approach stakeholder management differently based on the team you're talking to?

Andrew Kodner

Bazaarvoice VP, Revenue Operations | Formerly Amazon Web Services (AWS), RingCentral, Marin Software, Riverbed, Oracle, Siebel, Hyperion • 3y

Never underestimate the importance of understanding different perspectives. For any given topic, Leadership, the Board, Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, Professional S...

2,403 Views

How do you measure your own success in your role?

Lisa Dziuba

Lemon.io Head of Growth Product Marketing | Formerly LottieFiles, WeLoveNoCode (made $3.6M ARR), Abstract, Flawless App (sold) • 3y

Success in any role can be measured in a variety of ways, depending on the specific goals and objectives of the position. Measuring my own success means for me that I: a...

541 Views

What are some tried and true strategies to drive alignment cross-functionally for a remote team?

Melissa Sinclair

Shopify Senior Revenue Operations Lead • 7mo

For remote alignment, keep it simple: shared clarity, trust, explicit decisions, and visible follow‑through:Anchor on clarity: purpose, values, work, strategy, top themat...

490 Views

How do you build better relationships with demand generation?

How do you constantly stay aligned and how have your revenue operations teams traditionally worked with your demand generation teams?

Andrew Kodner

Bazaarvoice VP, Revenue Operations | Formerly Amazon Web Services (AWS), RingCentral, Marin Software, Riverbed, Oracle, Siebel, Hyperion • 3y

These days, it's hard not to agree that Demand Generation is one of the most metrics driven teams focused on pipeline creation, whether it’s Marketing Demand Generation o...

2,302 Views

What are some good templates or best practices for when to gather input and how to incorporate (i.e. whose feedback to incorporate vs. ignore, etc.), especially as it relates to a timeline?

Andrew Kodner

Bazaarvoice VP, Revenue Operations | Formerly Amazon Web Services (AWS), RingCentral, Marin Software, Riverbed, Oracle, Siebel, Hyperion • 3y

99 Views

How can I break down the forecast pipelines ($) on product level?

Currently our sellers give overall ARR inputs on opp level on CRM. We are finding it challenging to take it directly from CPQ quote lines due to multiple records for a single product (i.e. no hygiene on quote lines). Using Salesforce for both CRM and CPQ Any suggestions appreciated. Happy to connect via text/call. Thanks!

Zeina Marcotte

LinkedIn Senior Director, Strategic Accounts - LMS Sales Operations • 8mo

In order to forecast at the product level, you’ll need historical bookings broken down by product and/or open pipeline data by product on opportunities in your CRM.Below ...

939 Views

How can I persuade a “cost-focused” finance team to approve my requested SaaS solutions and changes to the tech stack that I believe will improve revenue and forecasting?

Bridget Hudacs

Knowledge Vortex Salesforce Functional Analyst • 1y

Show them the money:What are current expenses with your existing tech stack?What are the issues with the current tech stack? How do those issues impact the bottom line? (...

542 Views

Where is the best place to start improving the accuracy of pipeline and forecasting reports (currently off by at least 20% each quarter)?

We use Salesforce and currently base reports on opp stages.

Ken Liu

Redis Director - Global Sales Strategy & Operations | Formerly Databricks, Google • 10mo

For simplicity sake, I'll assume that your forecasts at the beginning of the qtr are +/-20% from end-of-qtr (EOQ) actuals (since forecasts near the EoQ converge with actu...

606 Views

Earlier in your career, how did you work with the C-Suite?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • 1y

I learned soon enough that being direct and straightforward was vital when engaging with senior execs at the organization. C-level execs face a multitude of priorities, t...

424 Views

What do revenue operations managers get wrong when trying to influence the C-Suite?

Sowmya Srinivasan

HubSpot Vice President of Revenue Operations • 10mo

One of the biggest mistakes is thinking influence is about more detail, more slides, or more dashboards. It’s not. I learned this the painful way. Influence comes from cl...

417 Views

If you could give your younger self advice on influencing C-Suite as a revenue operations manager; what would it be?

Sowmya Srinivasan

HubSpot Vice President of Revenue Operations • 10mo

If I could go back and give my younger self advice, it would be this: influencing the C-Suite isn’t about having all the answers - it’s about showing up with clarity, con...

487 Views

How do you ensure alignment when you have two senior executive stakeholders who disagree with each other on the proposed strategy and you are stuck in the middle?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • 1y

When two senior execs are at odds, focus on the common goal. Just try to make it factual, so you present data or insights that address their differing viewpoints, and pro...

408 Views

What are some ways that junior and newer revenue operations managers can get greater exposure to the C-Suite?

Sowmya Srinivasan

HubSpot Vice President of Revenue Operations • 10mo

C-Suite exposure usually comes by doing solid work that ladders up, not by chasing the spotlight. I recommend taking the most organic path is: do the work well, show the ...

446 Views

What do your interactions with the C-Suite look like on a regular basis?

Sowmya Srinivasan

HubSpot Vice President of Revenue Operations • 10mo

I engage with the C-Suite as a thought partner & operator -focusing on shaping strategy and connecting operations to the company's vision. This happens in formal sett...

431 Views

How do we work with our Exec team to help narrow down what we focus on?

Revenue operations managers often get pulled in several directions and everything feels urgent.

Sowmya Srinivasan

HubSpot Vice President of Revenue Operations • 10mo

I am a firm believer that by quantifying impact, illustrating the cost of diluted efforts, and highlighting necessary trade-offs, RevOps empower the executive team to sha...

506 Views

How do you help finance understand the role of SDR’s, and include them in structuring territories and OTE’s?

We are getting ready to hire our first few SDRs to support our sales team of 2 AEs. The AE’s divide their territories roughly down the middle of the US map.

Tyler Will

Intercom VP, Revenue Operations | Formerly LinkedIn • 11mo

The SDR model at this point is solidly established, at least at most technology companies that I know. You should be able to quickly explain the hypothesis for why adding...

450 Views

How have you made the business case to get more finance resources to help support the revenue engine?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • 1y

How I build a case for more finance resources to support our revenue engine- Connect the Dots: Showed how increasing finance support would lead to more revenue. With more...

829 Views

What can revenue operations do to help the situation where finance wants to start an approval process for discounts being applied too broadly to too many accounts, but sales reps are upset about it?

Bridget Hudacs

Knowledge Vortex Salesforce Functional Analyst • 1y

In my experience, Finance requesting the additional work of monitoring Sales is more indicative of a need for understanding than control. Look into the root cause(s) of...

825 Views

How can RevOps play a more central role in bridging the gap between Marketing and Sales?

Lindsay Rothlisberger

Zapier Director, Revenue Operations • 2y

RevOps can play a pivotal role in bridging the gap between Marketing and Sales by implementing several actions: Calling out Misalignment: RevOps is uniquely positioned t...

1,288 Views

What tools or processes are currently in place to facilitate handoff between Marketing and Sales?

Azim Mitha

HubSpot Senior Director, Sales Strategy & Operations (APAC) • 11mo

The goal of the handoff is to ensure a smooth transition for the lead, so they don't feel dropped or confused, and for both teams to have all the context they need.This s...

622 Views

What metrics and KPIs are both Marketing and Sales tracking for lead performance?

Azim Mitha

HubSpot Senior Director, Sales Strategy & Operations (APAC) • 11mo

Aligning on metrics is crucial for bridging that marketing and sales gap. Key metrics and KPIs that both Marketing and Sales should be tracking for lead performance:MQLs ...

521 Views

What are the biggest challenges you're facing when it comes to marketing and sales alignment?

Lindsay Rothlisberger

Zapier Director, Revenue Operations • 2y

We recently started selling a new product and so our key challenges are:Unified Narrative: One of the biggest hurdles is ensuring consistent messaging across all customer...

1,544 Views

How do you map the ideal customer journey across all touchpoints (marketing, sales, customer success)?

Lindsay Rothlisberger

Zapier Director, Revenue Operations • 2y

Mapping the ideal customer journey can be a great alignment exercise. The way I’ve done it is using the existing journey as a starting point, applying customer-centric th...

813 Views

How do you ensure consistency in messaging across all marketing channels and sales communications?

Mollie Bodensteiner

SVP of Operations | Formerly Engine, Sound, Deel, Marketo, Syncari • 11mo

This requires both process and technology solutions. We maintain centralized messaging frameworks that get regularly updated based on market feedback and competitive inte...

442 Views

What data points do you use to assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns in nurturing leads?

Mollie Bodensteiner

SVP of Operations | Formerly Engine, Sound, Deel, Marketo, Syncari • 11mo

We've moved beyond vanity metrics to focus on behavioral progression indicators and predictive engagement signals. Our assessment framework evaluates lead progression vel...

539 Views

Who do you align yourself with to gain momentum in the leadership organization?

Ignacio Castroverde

Cisco Senior Director, Global SMB & Mid-Market Sales Acceleration and Program Office • 1y

I want to make a point here: it's with everyone on the C-Suite.You need to ensure everybody's goals and concerns are heard. But if you'd need to prioritise, I'd pay speci...

417 Views

What are the top 3 things that will provide value to C-Suites as a revenue operations manager?

Ken Liu

Redis Director - Global Sales Strategy & Operations | Formerly Databricks, Google • 3y

Revenue operations provides utility to the C-suite in various capacities, ranging from revenue forecasting, to process optimization to data and analytics. These are all ...

2,028 Views

What's a good way to approach decisions that other teams feel they should own vs. Revenue Operations feels they should own?

Andrew Kodner

Bazaarvoice VP, Revenue Operations | Formerly Amazon Web Services (AWS), RingCentral, Marin Software, Riverbed, Oracle, Siebel, Hyperion • 3y

When it comes to cross functional items, ownership has to be a partnership to succeed. While Revenue Operations may be the primary on Territory planning and Pipeline targ...

3,537 Views

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