A few months ago, a colleague asked me to describe a typical day working in Revenue Operations. I said that right after my iced triple (non-negotiable) “I check email/slack for any urgent support or requests and immediately lose control of my day.” I was half-joking, but the reality is that a day in the life of RevOps can be as unpredictable as a firefighter’s. The interesting part is, it’s not their fault.
I’ve observed that the great RevOps teams operate more like design-builders, who aren’t putting out one fire and leaving the ruins for the next but are methodically building, renovating, and beautifying what’s around them. At first, one or two areas get built out, and then they start to connect to each other — until finally, a well-planned neighborhood emerges and growth and happiness follow.
The most important thing that a company can do to enable a RevOps team to be successful isn’t actually to hire a design-builder over a firefighter. It’s to define success by having a clear and adopted goal-setting process at both the company and departmental levels. With clear goals in hand, RevOps teams can focus while funneling large new asks into the backlog for the next planning process.
An absence of clear focus creates silos, power struggles, bureaucracies, infighting, and way too many meetings as everyone pushes their own agendas. RevOps ends up in the middle, implementing half-baked solutions that then are stitched together, leaving employees and customers pulling fire alarms left and right. Next time you see your firefighter, give them a high-five! And next time you see your leadership team, ask them how those goals are coming along 😉.