Revenue Operations Job Titles
Who Are the RevOps Experts?
“What would you say…you do here?” is an iconic line from the cult classic, Office Space. The line in the movie was directed at an employee whose job seemed to be obsolete. This question can also be relevant in the world of RevOps, not because RevOps pros are in any way obsolete, but rather because a RevOps job description can often be quite vague.
This stems from, first, a confusion over who truly does RevOps in a company and, second, what they are actually in charge of. Let’s tackle the “who” problem first.
Successful companies have employees who specialize in the area of revenue operations (“RevOps”). Oftentimes, these people are hiding in plain sight due to the fact that their job title does not always include “RevOps specialist”, “RevOps expert”, or “Revenue Operations Manager”.
To complicate matters further, it has become fashionable to replace sales ops job titles with the word “revenue”. How and why did this happen?
RevOps: When a Word Isn't Just a Word Anymore
Over the last few years, “RevOps'' has been trending. It’s one thing for a term to become popular in Google searches, it’s quite another for a term to become so influential that it causes a change in the titles of company executives. Case in point:
The Rise of Revenue Operations
No one wants to be a Chief Sales Officer; they want to be a Chief Revenue Officer.
VP Sales Operations? Nah. VP Revenue Operations.
Good luck finding a Director of Sales Operations. Overwhelmingly, they are now Directors of Revenue Operations.
These people might be revenue operations specialists. Or they might not be.
The main reason these title changes are occurring is not because a large number of executives suddenly went back to school and got a Masters degree in revenue operations; the change is primarily being made because of a shift in focus to the whole customer journey.
What Does a RevOps Professional Do?
The RevOps Pro is in the Know, but do you Know the RevOps Pro?
The new popularity of RevOps has given rise to the (formerly mythical) “RevOps professional”. Who is this person exactly? The RevOps leaders in a company may or may not have the words RevOps or revenue in their job title (they are “title independent”), but they will:
- Own the forecasting model
- Be the one saying, “here’s what revenue we’re hitting and based on that, here’s who we’re hiring and when we’re hiring them”
- Be the one who knows how/where money is being spent
- Know the models
- Know the GTM motions
- Help prioritize initiatives
This could be the CFO, the CEO, the VP of Sales, anyone really. The title is not important. Anyone who is doing the above items is doing RevOps and worth their weight in gold to their company.
RevOps Pro=Indispensable
Firefighter. Teacher. Nurse. RevOps professional. Almost everyone in society would be able to describe in detail what the job description of the first three professions listed would entail.
Very, very few people would be able to describe the fourth. A RevOps professional is one who can forecast and build a G2M (go-to-market). This means:
- Creating the TAM (total addressable market)
- Creating buyer (marketing) personas
- Creating the messaging
- Creating Excel documents to determine what you’re hiring in sales, what you're hiring in marketing, and what your budget is
- Ability to read a P & L
- Knowing what accounts payable are
- Knowing what accounts receivable are
In short, a RevOps professional is one who can affect the success or failure of companies in a more repeatable fashion.
While RevOps can sometimes be pigeonholed as simply a system to align sales, marketing, and the customer, it’s so much more than that. It’s all about replicating the steps and motions that create revenue growth over the long term.
Hint: if your company is constantly guessing what procedures are necessary for driving revenue growth, then you’re not doing RevOps well.
Shameless plug: At RevPartners, we offer RevOps as a service. We reduce friction and improve workflows by designing, building, and executing a revenue process to support a holistic go-to-market strategy. Let us be your RevOps team.
Take Me Out to the (RevOps) Ball Game
If you’re still thinking to yourself, “what does a RevOps person do?”, consider America's pastime-baseball. In recent years, analytics has taken over baseball (and other sports as well).
As important as analytics has become, the Director of Analytics (Sabermetrics) for a baseball team is not the general manager. The role of the analyst is to help the GM make informed decisions regarding which players to acquire.
In a similar fashion, the RevOps professional(s) in a company are not necessarily the CEOs. The RevOps pros are the ones who will help influence the prioritization of initiatives and how money should be spent. In a way, a RevOps pro is half scientist, half project management expert.
The Value of RevOps
The value and worth of RevOps professionals cannot be overstated. While some specifics may vary…a RevOps pro might be a high level executive (or they might not be); they may have the word “revenue” in their job title (or they may not), one thing is clear: a RevOps professional is vital to a company's success.
When it comes to a company’s RevOps experts, it’s time to stop thinking, “What would you say…you do here?”, and time to begin saying, “We’re so glad you’re here”.
