Same Old Song and Dance

Revenue leaders who are lucky enough to set up a RevOps team often don’t know who to bring on as the first hire.  Whether hearing about RevOps for the first time from a board member or having worked with RevOps teams in prior roles, the leader might not be sure where to start. 

It’s no surprise: women and men at work in RevOps today were most likely doing other things even recently.  The concept evolved over the past decade or so.  It started out with a much smaller scope, often sitting within Marketing or Sales groups and focusing only on external customer behavior and insights.  Those groups then gradually added internal elements, such as process improvements, training and enablement of the team, and analytics in key areas like deal movement.  From there, it was easy to expand to all groups within a company’s revenue team.

Now, RevOps often spans diverse areas like data analysis, KPI tracking, process improvement, CRM and tech stack ownership, and team enablement across many connected but different groups.  Just thinking about covering all of that can leave leaders very tired and not feeling right.

A Change Would Do You Good

Before those feelings come again, here are some ways to think about getting started:

• Follow the trend: now that RevOps roles have become mainstream, there are a couple of more common paths:  sales or marketing analysts and FP&A analysts appear to be the most frequent.  Project managers are also joining the mix due to the process portion of the job.
• When those candidates start knocking at your door, here are a few vital qualities and skills to uncover with behavioral interview questions:  
  • Analytical: anyone in RevOps must be able to make sense of the data, get answers that lead to good decisions, and advocate for change based on facts
  • Driven: along with analysis, RevOps team members must drive for results and get things done, both alone and collaboratively
  • Service Mindset: all of the work RevOps does is in support of others; their customers are inside the company, essentially everyone whose work improves because of the analysis RevOps does, the systems RevOps helps put in place, and the processes and improvements RevOps makes
• What to focus on first? At its core, RevOps will always need to track KPIs, do data analysis, and improve processes.  Look for those abilities in your candidates first.  You can always bring on specialists for CRM administration and enablement once you’ve established a solid foundation. 
• Tip: Don’t forget about fractional options.  There are experts out there who have skills across all of the areas you need, but who will cost you less because they accomplish your initial needs in less time.  These are great bridge resources to get you started.