The head of the Revenue Operations unit is likely to be the Chief Revenue Officer. There could easily be a VP of RevOps in place, but the buck will stop with the CRO. Having worked with, hired, onboarded, and shadowed a number of highly skilled CROs, there are 10 skills we have highlighted that should promote success in a RevOps role:
1 Ability to think strategically – Can you link your objectives into company goals as well as the tactical pieces that will achieve these objectives
2 Ability to think analytically – Metrics, metrics, metrics. RevOps is about data and the better you can interpret a data set, the farther you will go.
3 Communication skills – You need to be able to link specific concepts to business value points across different departments that have different priorities.
4 Building consensus – You need to align users, decision-makers, champions, and blockers internally to create support for particular initiatives.
5 Creative problem solving – What if that budget you were promised suddenly vanishes, how can you creatively solve that problem?
6 Ability to enable and educate – You need to create and distribute material that will help salespeople sell more and often run education campaigns to this effect.
7 Technical ability – Do you code? Do you know SQL or Javascript or even what low-code is? People will look at you to be the subject matter expert so better get brushing up!
8 Ability to find and hire a team – People are everything and knowing who you want and into what structure is paramount for a revenue department.
9 Project management – You’ll have a number of projects going on at any one time, so this has to be a key skill. Use software like Asana for this.
10 Customer-centric priorities – You need to consider all aspects of deal, market and people intelligence with the customer at your centre and this needs to manifest itself in every activity you do.
A high-quality RevOps leader needs to have a vision of what is the best impact that the RevOps department can have for top tier growth. While they might not have all the answers at interview, look for ways they break down the RevOps challenge and how they tackle it. It is a big job and it is one we at Sales for Startups have been doing for nearly four years and have amassed experience close to 120 years.