I always ask questions related to a business problem that I am trying to solve, in order to assess hypothesis-driven, structured problem solving and quantitative reasoning / analysis. An example would be "How would you determine the cause for increased churn in the business?". I want to see how candidates think through the various drivers and how they would test their hypotheses to come up with an answer. Bonus points if it's an actionable driver that can actually reduce churn (as an example). 

Career path will vary widely depending on the person. I'll answer this question with the view of "how do I progress my career path in rev ops": 1. Be consistent in your day to day: Build a reputation as a dependable teammate that will get the job done. Do this by hitting timelines, taking ownership of your work, and delivering high quality products. 2. Practice and tailor your communication skills: Be able to inspire confidence from your stakeholders in both verbal and written communications. Do this a. by concisely articulating your point, use fewer words and use numbers to illustrate b. focus on a single point you want to get across, the details or ancillary items will take focus away from the main thing c. tailor you communication to the audience. Put yourself in the shoes of who you're presenting to and consider what they are looking for. Your chief revenue officer is looking for a different message than your peer. 3. Uncover opportunities on your own and have a plan to execute: Finding an opportunity to make the business better, and having a plan to execute on it is one of the biggest differentiators. Chances are, you know your business or scope better than your manager--and you should be thinking about ways to improve it. The difference between "what else can I do?" vs. "this is an opportunity I want to test" is a differentiator. 

Here are some of my favorites templates/resources 1. OpsCast Podcast (https://marketingops.com/podcasts/) 2. OpsStars Conference (https://www.ops-stars.com/) 3. Operations with Sean Lane (https://operationspodcast.drift.com/public/13/Operations-43678) 4. RevOps Podcast (https://www.revenue.io/revops-podcast) 5. Marketing Ops Professionals Slack Group 6. Darrell Alfonso - Linkedin (https://www.linkedin.com/in/darrellalfonso/) 7. Chief Martec (https://chiefmartec.com/)

As a RevOps leader, a key capability that I rely on is conversational intelligence to complement a data-driven quantitive approach. The B2B SaaS market and buyer preferences are changing at such a rapid pace and it's super important to stay plugged into what is on the minds of your prospects, customers and partners. I regularly leverage conversational intelligence to listen into calls and get aggregated insights into market sentiment, emerging use cases and identify any friction points that may exist across our customer journey. Conversational intelligence allows us to get into the minds of our prospects, customers and partners and understand what problems they are looking to solve and how they want to solve them. When combined with a data-driven and analytical approach, these insights give me inspiration to proactively launch new plays and initiatives to drive continued customer value.

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 often a massive project that needs executive-level buyin and resourcing. If it's treated as a side project that one team can own, it won't be complete. I'd focus on the business case and generating buyin for the initiative and then come up with owners for the subsets of the data. (ex. firmographic/demographic information would likely be owned by RevOps, sales might be responsible for Contract information, product for product usage, etc.). Select the owner for the overall project and continued maintenance based on the data infrastructure. This is likely corp eng, product, or an overall bizops/program mgmt team.

When I go into an organization and establish a Revenue Operations practice for the first time, my typical 30, 60, 90 is as follows: * 30: Review Landscape, Define the Foundation * Define and align on what Revenue Operations means to the organization (ensure clear roles and responsibilities) * Identify the current state, gaps, and priorities (this includes existing processes, KPIs, tools/tech, resources, etc.) * Define how you will deliver (how should stakeholders work with revops, operating cadence, communication strategy) * Build plan for next 3 months (get alignment/buy-in on this) * 60: Build the Foundation * Focus on delivering the foundational items needed for the business: Lifecycle, Rules of Engagement, Standard Operating Procedures, etc. * This is critical, without having a stable foundation everything else will wobble * 90: Iterate and Operationalize * Identify the key deliverables and initiatives needed to move business forward through efficiency, performance improvements, etc. (this will be different for every business) I urge RevOps leaders to come in and ensure they have a strong framework across people, process, data, policy and technology before trying to immediately jump into “project” work as without this foundational framework building a strong operating cadence for prioritization, resource allocation and delivery becomes very challenging.

RevOps professionals have a lot to offer other parts of the business. They have valuable experience driving GoToMarket strategies, improving processes, leveraging technology to improve productivity, using data to tell stories, and much more. These are valuable skills that are easily transferrable to other parts of the business. In high-growth SaaS companies, bookings are king. As a result, sales/marketing typically gets the majotiry of budget for tools & tech. RevOps professionals can take the great experience they get in sales/marketing and apply it to other parts of the business that typically don't have similar resources. In fact, I am in the process of taking many of the best-practices we've implemented in sales/marketing and applying them to our customer implementation team.

My specific team is focussed on post-sales revenue operations. We are structured around a few aspects: 1. The Craft: Meaning merchant facing roles (ex. Customer Success, Sales, etc). My team is first split by that grain so they can really get to know the roles of those areas and develop strong stakeholder relationships to build the best process/systems/etc they can. 2. Segment: The second grain they are structured to is customer segment. The customer experience can differ greatly between segments depending on how many you have, size of those segments, and difference in the customer base avatar of those segments. (Ex. I have someone on my team that leads Customer Success Operations for Segment A while I have another person that leads Customer Success Operations for Segment B). This structure has really allowed the team to become highly impactful and to be able to ship impactful work quick while staying in tune with multiple teams for their areas.

Balancing short- and long-term health is essential, it defines the pace at which the company makes its inroads, even if it already achieved some "financial independence" through a healthy LTV/CAC ratio. When thinking about the long term, I’d think mostly of productivity ($/HC), NRR, profitability and vintaged data. Zooming in: * Productivity: Analyze sales HC productivity by product/service, sales approach (acquisition, renewal, upsell, etc.), and market/segment. Comparability is key to appropriately set swim lanes, sales territories, and set internal benchmarks. * NRR potential (customer value headroom): Utilize past sales data, client firmographics, product usage, and post-sales CRM signals to identify the features that best predict NRR potential. This allows for refining segmentation, resource deployment, and target setting. * Profitability: The effectiveness of your 3 examples vary depending on whether margin is measured by function or by segment x product line. Work closely with your finance function to allocate direct and indirect costs, to pin down what really makes you money. Be prepared for surprises here. * Vintages: Evaluate customer NRR (Net Revenue Retention) by vintage to differentiate micro and macro trends and create ROI conviction (sales and CS resourcing, marketing budget) for new & old logos alike. A final thought on metrics: one key aspect is to drive clarity in the roles of RevOps vs. Sales in metric selection. While only a subset of sales leaders find value in digging deeply into metrics, all of them drive better outcomes when equipped with a crystal-clear narrative to drive their teams. Ruthlessly prioritize your external-facing KPIs and desired outcomes, even if in the background you are working hard to correlate short-term and long-term metrics. In summary, don’t shy away from strategy discovery but simplify execution by reducing the number of dimensions articulated to and by Sales.

Alignment of internal stakeholders for a specific project/initiative is important to ensure that everyone is working towards the same objectives & goals. Here are a few ways I drive stakeholder alignment: * Define what are you solving for (ie. what are the goals & objectives of a specific initiative). Ensure that your stakeholders understand the goals & objectives, and what success looks like. * Identify the role of each stakeholder in the project/initiative, and align on the roles & responsibilities with each stakeholder. Explain how the contribution of each stakeholder ladders up to the overall project/initiative goals & objectives. This will help to remove confusion or friction. * Align with each stakeholder on timelines and deliverables. * Develop a clear project plan that outlines key deliverables, timelines, and scope. Conduct proactive & regular communication with all stakeholders to ensure everyone is on the same page about progress on key workstreams. * Regularly meet with each of the key stakeholders to understand their feedback, what blockers & challenges are they facing, and what actions you will take as the next steps based on the feedback shared. * Foster collaboration among stakeholders (for eg, using a shared project workspace). The above are steps that I take when aligning internal stakeholders. Please feel free to reach out to me directly via LinkedIn message if you would like to discuss this further.