How to Stand Up a Revenue Operations Team

*Updated September 2022*

Why Revenue Operations?

The reason businesses need Revenue Operations is simple: Whether or not you’re aware of them, the gaps that exist in your customer journey are costing you revenue. The way you fix those gaps is by strategically unifying your go-to-market operations and prioritizing the work that will be most impactful. The way you do this is by moving your organization to a RevOps model.

Speaking the RevOps Language

In the hero story of Revenue Operations, silos are the villain. Look at your company as an ecosystem where each part is integral to the survival of the whole. That way, you’ll get an idea of where the system is breaking down.

To get rid of these harmful silos, you’ll need to start changing the language around your go-to-market teams. You’ll also need to put processes in place to encourage more communication between them.

For example, thinking of your go-to-market teams as a single revenue team will help reduce friction as you start to make broader operational changes.

Hiring for RevOps

While it might be tempting to jump right into hiring revenue operators, there are some important considerations to make first.

Depending on the size and maturity of your organization, it’s possible you already have much of the talent you need. A revenue operations team is most successful when it has a blend of expertise across four core skills: Strategy, Tools, Enablement, and Insights. Ask yourself:

• Do we have the skills to execute the work on our roadmap?
• Which capabilities are we missing?
• Which area(s) need(s) strengthening?

If you find that a gap exists, you can either augment your team with outside consultants like Go Nimbly or choose to hire. When hiring in-house, the ideal candidate will have some expertise in two or more of the core skills.

(Maybe this goes without saying, but they should also understand and believe in the mission to unify your go-to-market operations.)

Who Does RevOps Roll Up To?

Once you’ve determined who will make up your revenue operations team, the next step is to build it. In our experience, this is where a lot of uncertainty comes from. There’s this idea that if your team doesn’t roll up to the “right” person or have the perfect structure from the get-go, it is doomed to fail.

The truth is, it doesn’t really matter whether your revenue operations team reports to your CRO, COO, or CEO. The important thing is that whoever it is, they know how to make revenue the north star for the team and oversee operational strategy accordingly.

Some operators have also asked us whether they need to structure their revenue operations team according to the four core skills. To this, we say the fewer silos, the better. What you want is a unified team of generalists, not pods of different specialists.

Structuring Your RevOps Team

As you start to define your org shape, here are some things to consider:

• Is there a balance between senior team members and junior talent?
• Is there work being done now that could be done at a lower cost? 
• Are company leaders delegating the right work?

Maintaining Autonomy & Alignment

In the interest of wrapping this up nicely, I want to touch on how to keep your revenue operations team functioning effectively once you’ve built it.

‘Alignment’ is a word everyone loves to say, but it’s not always easy to achieve. By building an operational roadmap and updating it frequently, you ensure that your revenue team stays on the same page as far as what work to prioritize.

Also keep in mind that your revenue operations team is not there to replace any of your go-to-market teams, nor is it a support function for them. The revenue operations team should have the autonomy to establish a strategy based solely on revenue goals and funnel analysis.

Happy RevOps Team-Building!