RevOps has been steadily gaining popularity especially within the tech ecosystem. However, the resources and information around this field remains limited.
At the heart of it, RevOps includes establishing and maintaining systems and processes that enable an efficient sales motion. This can mean overseeing the CRM, building revenue forecasts, analyzing key metrics, and creating reports to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Having worked in this area, I wanted to outline some key learnings that might be helpful in establishing this at an early-stage startup.
One source of truth
Imagine a seed startup with runaway growth, calendars booked with demos, and a small team juggling thousands of tasks. The founder installs Salesforce, a GTM lead sets up HubSpot, and marketing tracks leads in a spreadsheet.
I have seen this happen more often than not. All CRMs suck in one way or the other, but just pick one and stick with it.Structure it to reflect YOUR customer lifecycle.
Take 30 minutes to define each stage to ensure consistency of use as you move away from founder-led sales. Assign responsibility to one person to do weekly/monthly hygiene checks.
This is the backbone of your growth, do not let it sit stale.
Forecasting
Once you’ve raised your seed round, forecasting becomes critical. Investors want to see projected growth, but you also need this to determine hiring and spend.
There are 3 pillars for this: customer acquisition, revenue expansion (up-selling), and retention.
In most-cases, you’re relying on a bottom-up model. This just means that you pick a lever, marketing spend/BDRs - you increase BDRs, you get more revenue (ideally).
Now comes assumptions. Ideally you have some historical data to back this up, but if not then do some research and pick realistic numbers. For example, leads to paying customer stands around 3-4%. Document these in detail, and have a sound argument behind them.
The math should be straightforward. For every month, you need:
(+) New bookings: leads x conversion % x monthly subscription
(+) Expansion: customers x expansion % x new monthly subscription
(-) Churn: customers x churn % x original subscription
Over time, you want to model growth by increasing your lever aka hiring more BDRs. Note that your cost per lead will also go down as you continue to build brand equity.
I’ve oversimplified this here. Check out this video by Andrew to learn how to do this in Excel.
Metrics
These should be simple signals that help you make faster decisions. For early-stage companies, your north star is revenue so pick 3-4 that relate to that. A few I’ve found helpful:
Win/loss ratio: overall but also sliced for different customer groups/geographies
Sales velocity: need to understand how fast a customer converts and figure out hand-offs if needed
Deal velocity: how long does it take a customer to sign, will help you streamline your contracts and pricing
NRR: can you retain your customer, are they spending more or less over time - you’re striving for 110%+
Reporting
There is a love-hate relationship with dashboards. I think they hold a place to facilitate discussions and reduce friction between teams.
The trick is co-building dashboards with the people who’ll use them - sales, marketing, leadership. Early buy-in prevents endless “why does this number look off?” debates later.
Keep the data connections stable, automatically update it daily, and institute role-based access so the output is always accurate.
People Ops
It is difficult to overstate the importance of a good sales team. There are BDRs driving $1M+ in pipeline and your role is to get them onboard.
It hinges on two things: interview process and compensation.
With a small team, limit the process to 3 rounds including a practical assessment.
Compensation is tricky and dependent on cash flow. Have a competitive OTE, but keep it uncapped especially for S-tier salespeople.
Being the conductor
Your role is to dictate how the music is played. Using the data and metrics available, you need to constantly figure out some key things:
Is your sales team in the right channels?
Is the messaging resonating with your potential customers?
Are you bringing in the right leads?
What collateral/asset will improve sales velocity?
What’s driving churn vs retention?
Keeping a pulse across the revenue cycle and providing appropriate support is the key. Ensure that everyone has the right understanding of your ICP and the process is designed for this cohort.
RevOps is an evolving craft, and I’m still learning every day. This isn’t an exhaustive playbook, but hopefully, it gives you a place to start. If you’ve seen other approaches that worked at your startup, I’d love to compare notes.