Josh Chang

This can take many forms, but most paths will require you to demonstrate an analytical and strategic mindset and the ability to translate business questions and needs to technical work, and vice versa. A successful path I've seen is if you have experience in a certain function (Marketing, Sales, Services, etc.) and move into more of a data role - be the technical expert for your team and help answer questions with data. That was my career path as I started my career as a marketer, specialized in paid marketing, and then realized how much I loved Excel, SQL, etc., and pursued that. Another route is starting from the technical side with an analytics or data engineering role. The key to success here is obviously having strong technical skills, but more importantly, the ability and willingness to apply those technical skills in conjunction with a strategic mindset. Don't just focus on the technical work, rather, make sure you're always thinking about business context and cross-functional collaboration.

Honestly, I believe revenue operations leaders need soft skills more than hard skills. Hopefully they are coming from a background where hard skills like data analysis and visualization and Excel/SQL were needed, but broadening this question out to general skills - data analysis, storytelling, and communication and collaboration are the most important. * Data analysis: Revenue operations leaders and teams are working with and responsible for the data that supports their stakeholders, so leaders should have a strong skillset in taking that data and using it to answer questions and solve problems so they can support stakeholders as well as help their teams do the same. * Storytelling: This is kind of an extension of data analysis, but all the best data analysts are also outstanding storytellers. The CEO of your company is often not going to want the nitty gritty details of an analysis project, and so revenue operations leaders and professionals need to be able to distill complex topics into simple stories and narratives that someone who is not in the weeds will understand and take action on. * Collaboration: This is obviously important in MOST jobs, but revenue operations leaders are constantly working to align different teams and stakeholders across business functions, as well as help their own teams make the right strategy decisions. For example, Sales and Marketing are so reliant on each other, but oftentimes aren't collaborating nearly as much as they should be. A RevOps leader needs to be able to quickly identify those gaps and drive action based on aligned data, priorities, and initiatives. 

There obviously is not a one-size-fits-all approach here, but the way I think about this boils down to a few things: * Create and foster a culture of learning and collaboration amongst your team, and enable folx to solve interesting problems together without someone constantly looking over their shoulder. When your team is learning and growing together with autonomy, that can sometimes be a tough thing to recreate somewhere else. * Expanding on that, top talent will always value autonomy and trust in their work. I lean towards giving my team almost too much autonomy - the best way for them to learn is to learn from mistakes and figuring things out on their own, but it's also an important skill to know when to ask for help. * Advocate tirelessly for your team and your top talent - that can apply to comp/promotions, visibility and exposure at a big company, or giving frequent positive and constructive feedback. I've been really lucky to have worked for managers who have advocated tirelessly for me and as an employee I really valued that. Working with a manager who knows your skillset and body of work well is super valuable so make it clear to your team how much you value them and then execute on that.

One of the most important RevOps skills that could be applied across an organization would be familiarity and expertise with data specific to teams that are being supported (i.e. Marketing or Sales). Folx working on those teams are obviously experts in their field, but they don't know what they don't know, especially from a data perspective. RevOps professionals or perspectives can help to uncover new insights that teams didn't even know existed in their datasets or tech stack, or even just help identify new problems to solve and opportunities to grow the business. I'm constantly trying to work with stakeholders to identify new "What about..." questions that my team can help them solve, that would make their day-to-day easier and most importantly, their work more impactful.

This varies depending on the person, but here are some general ideas! * Try to get a different perspective, if possible from someone who can be neutral, and is familiar with both you and your work and your boss. Depending on your relationship with your boss, sometimes it can be helpful to hear someone else give similar feedback to you so it doesn't seem like it is just coming from one place. * If you're not getting this already, ask your boss to give you specific examples or things they would like to see as a result of their feedback. And, try to identify what type of support you need in order to do those things. For example, maybe scheduling a regular async check-in so that you can get more real-time feedback so you know if you're moving in the right direction or not. 

After many years focused on demand generation from a Marketing perspective, I realized that I wanted to be part of a team that helped to drive decisions across the whole organization, rather than focused on a specific team or area like demand generation. I also had a data and strategy oriented skillset that helped me naturally gravitate towards revenue operations. Coming from a demand generation background, felt I had enough knowledge of other functions where I could have a bigger impact on the business helping to connect siloed teams instead of continuing to just focus on one area, and really advocate for connection across teams to align individual KPIs to the north star KPI of revenue. 

Think about revenue operations as the glue that holds and connects the different parts of the business and aligns them all to the same strategic objectives. You might already have sales, services, and marketing teams, and maybe even operations people embedded within each, but it's likely that the connection points and collaboration between all these different functions is lacking. Sales might be so focused on closing deals and not providing feedback to Marketing on what types of demand are the most effective. Marketing might be driving a ton of volume but it's the wrong volume, and for example, RevOps can help these functions get on the same page where Marketing Ops is optimizing the demand channel mix based on more detailed from their teammates on Sales Ops. I've seen this at many different types of businesses, small and large, and RevOps has the ability to align functions, disparate KPIs, and people to make sure you're all working in sync to drive more revenue.

Sometimes going straight into revenue operations isn't necessarily the best path to be successful in the field. Not to say you CAN'T go straight into RevOps, but I think it can be extremely beneficial to become a subject matter expert in a particular area that you want to support from a RevOps perspective. Some of the best RevOps analysts/strategists I've worked with were experts in Marketing, Sales, etc. first, and then moved into an operations role after gaining experience in the function. This gives you a ton of perspective and most importantly, empathy for the folx and business functions you will be supporting from a RevOps position. Personally, I first worked as a Marketing generalist, and then in Acquisition and Demand Generation for 5+ years before moving into revenue operations full time, so I feel pretty strongly that this is a great path towards being successful in RevOps!

1. Work closely with your functional teams and leaders across the different go-to-market teams at your company to identify their primary needs and objectives. 2. Within each of those, understand where the gaps are that can be filled by revenue operations. These might include deep data/analysis needs, reporting or attribution gaps, technical work, revenue attribution, etc. 3. Once you have those, identify the KPIs associated with each objective and determine where you have strategic vs. technical needs on the revenue operations side. 4. Outline your revenue operations specific OKRs and clearly articulate how those tie back to GTM team objectives. 5. For every individual project that comes out of this planning process, tie that back to one of your OKRs so that your teams have clarity on how their work ties back to broader objectives.

This might be a little controversial, but I think a lot of the multi-touch media mix attribution models you'll see from vendors and companies are supremely over-hyped UNLESS they are actually helping you make different decisions about your Marketing mix and strategy. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely people out there doing this right, but unless you have unbelievable cookie accept rates and tracking mechanisms across the web (or you're Google), a lot of it is, frankly, made up for the sake of pushing you to spend more on their platform or so that you have cool metrics to show your boss. I'm excited to see what AI is going to do for multi-touch attribution, with big companies like Google already doing awesome work here, but don't get sucked into "doing" multi-touch attribution and signing up with an expensive vendor just for the sake of doing it. Make sure you're doing it right with a clear sense of what you'll be able to change and optimize with the additional knowledge.