Hey y'all -
Welcome to my newsletter.
This is is for founders and sales leaders who want to scale their revenue teams.
Each week I share an essay and a few interesting links from the weekend.
In this weeks issue:
- Who owns RevOps?
- Building AI-Powered Sales Teams
- Automatically sending handwritten cards
Now onto this week's newsletter:
Who Owns RevOps?
Had dinner last week with a founder friend who asked a great question:
“When should I hire for RevOps and who should they report to?”
The Revenue Operations function is expanding its scope and it has founders wondering where the department should live.
Founders are leaning into the RevOps function and getting more deliberate with their spend.
I believe this trend will continue because RevOps has evolved from it's previous form.
Revenue Operations used to be the team that that owns your CRM and makes sure the leads are distributed. Maybe they do some revenue forecasting and performance analysis, but very little beyond that.
It's an important role, and its still required on teams larger than 10 reps.
But now teams are strapped with clay.com and a slew of other automations that make the RevOps function much more impactful to a sales team's performance.
So the question remains: Who Owns RevOps?
Your first Head of RevOps should be your Head of Sales.
I see founders get this wrong time and time again.
They have a poorly defined scope for the function, which leads to hiring for the wrong skillset and adjusting/learning on the fly.
Let's start by defining what RevOps is responsible for:
- Tech Stack - CRM, sales engagement, dailer, etc.
- TAM and Lead Data - make sure the reps are calling the right leads at the right time
- Revenue Performance Analysis - Reviewing funnel performance week to week and drawing insights from the data
- Revenue Planning and Forecasting - Owning the revenue plan (and headcount plan), updating forecast and projections based on performance
- Compensation planning and calculation - Setting the compensation plan, running the compensation numbers each month and submitting to finance
These responsibilities extend across sales, marketing, and customer success.
Another (new) function that may report into RevOps:
GTM Engineering - This is a new function that you are seeing more often in early-stage companies. They are responsible for using AI to automate the parts of sales process. This function should make your AE's more productive and keep team sizes smaller.
Start by defining what RevOps should do for your business.
Sales Enablement should report to RevOps
This team's primary job is to onboard reps and make them better at selling.
That’s a sales function, not a generic learning and development function.
If Enablement rolls up to HR, it’s going to turn into a training department.
You’ll get slide decks and workshops instead of quota-carrying reps getting better at their job.
This function should also roll up to RevOps who is on the hook for managing the hiring plan in partnership with sales leadership
RevOps should report to Sales
Field operations. Tools. Reporting. Territories. Forecasting. Compensation.
All of that lives in service to the revenue engine.
You can’t have RevOps buried under a CFO or COO who doesn’t understand what’s happening on the sales floor.
The same is true for marketing ops and CS ops.
Your first RevOps leader should be your Head of Sales
Until you’ve built out dedicated functions for Enablement and Ops, the Head of Sales owns it all.
They’re responsible for making the team more effective and more efficient.
They have the best seat in the house to decide what tools you need, what reports matter, and what skills your reps are missing.
Eventually, RevOps becomes its own department.
But not at $1M ARR. Not even at $5M ARR.
Before you carve out your rev ops team, make sure you have:
- Sales Enablement running onboarding and ongoing education
- Sales Ops managing systems and analysis
- Sales leadership that actually knows what’s happening in the field
Until then, RevOps is a hat your Head of Sales wears.
Curious how others have structured it?
When did you make your first RevOps hire? And who did they report to?
What's got my attention right now:
- Building AI-Powered Sales Teams with Finally's CRO Kevin "KD" Dorsey - check out podcast interview between Kyle Norton (Owner) and Kevin Dorsey (Finally). These two are living legends and good friends of mine. They walk through how to think about implementing AI for your sales team with tons of tactical examples and tools that you can try out.
- I've written before about sending physical mail and lumpy mail to get the attention of prospects. Alex Berman (don't know him) built an automation that uses ChatGPT + n8n + Scribeless to send handwritten cards. Check it out.
If you are using cold outreach to generate pipeline, this is something you should consider. Handwritten cards work!
That's it for this week. One more ask before you go: Can you please forward this email to one person that might find it useful?
Have a great week!
Martin
Have a question? Hit reply and send it over, I reply to each one of your emails.