Lauren Davis

Never underestimate the importance of building strong relationships at work. I honestly think all of this stems from building good relationships with the leadership across the teams and showing how RevOps can help CS improve, operate more efficiently, and achieve their goals. The fact of the matter is, both teams are working towards the same goals. When I’ve seen situations like this before, I think it’s best to focus on the following: Focus on the shared goals across the two teams. Create share ...Read More

The answer is, it depends. It depends on exactly what you're referring to when you say "customer data," how your org is setup, and where the data lives.  Customer data is many things: Firmographic/demographic information Contract, pricing, billing information Product usage Communication (ex. emails, meetings, calls) Rep-created (ex. account plans, notes) There needs to be an owner for each of these pieces and an owner on the strategy of how to connect them all into a single view. The latter is o ...Read More

RevOps’ role is to understand the entire customer journey, each team’s role, the company strategy, and how all those pieces mesh. While each GTM team (sales, marketing, customer success) is and should be focused on executing and hitting today’s goals, RevOps is thinking about tomorrow’s goals, what needs to happen in order to scale, and how to drive consistent, sustainable growth. There are many reasons and benefits to work together: Internal alignment and advocacy. A key part of the RevOps role ...Read More

It’s not uncommon for leadership to fixate on sales because it’s very easy to see the result: I hire one sales person, I get $X in incremental revenue. But the fact of the matter is that you can’t have sustainable revenue growth without retaining customers. For this problem in particular, I’d focus on two things: Breaking down revenue growth to show retention as part of the equation. For revenue this year, what % came from existing customers vs. new sales. If upsells and expansion live in CS, br ...Read More

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.  On the first topic, seek out others in the business who communicate well with the particular stakeholder. Don’t be afraid to address it with them directly too. If you don't have someone else to learn from, trial and error works too. Sometimes I see people try the same type of communication over and over, even if it's not working ...Read More

I start by identifying my key stakeholders and operating cadence to ensure that I’m meeting with critical stakeholders and team members regularly, and we have the necessary forums for appropriate communication. I revisit this regularly - whenever there’s a shift in scope, a reorg, new hires, or at a minimum once a quarter. This serves two purposes: 1) it ensures I’m meeting with the right people and 2) it forces me to clean up my calendar and prioritize the important meetings.  When building out ...Read More

We’ve structured our RevOps team so that we have horizontal functions like systems and data/analytics that support all GTM teams and then we have vertically-aligned functions, such as Sales Operations and Marketing Operations, that go deep in the teams they support. This allows us to flex resourcing to the parts of the business that are the most critical at the moment while also ensuring all teams are supported and streamlining communications. The vertically-aligned functions are the connective ...Read More

For projects and initiatives, start by defining stakeholders and the level of involvement they need to have. I’m a big fan of the RACI framework. Understanding who needs to be aligned and how is the first step in driving alignment.  Having one Accountable individual, or Directly Responsible Individual (DRI), also helps streamline communication. They should be responsible for identifying what are the key updates, who needs to know, and how to message it. More often than not, I’ve seen misalignmen ...Read More

I often remind people that some friction between teams is by design. For example, you want GTM thinking about how to grow and scale and you want finance thinking about how to do it efficiently. These are critical checks and balances to have in place. However, that can often lead to tense relationships.  When trying to mend a partnership, I focus on a few things to build trust: Time to reflect and calm down. This is crucial to do before anything. If the relationship is tense, it's likely felt on ...Read More

My favorite question to ask is: “Tell me about an area of opportunity you identified and how you drove it to completion.” One strong answer to this question can surface almost every quality I care about in a RevOps hire. I also like asking it early in the interview because it naturally leads to a lot of follow-up questions - and that’s where the real signal shows up. Strong answers demonstrate: Nose for value - how big and impactful was the opportunity they identified? Ownership - did they truly ...Read More