What is a T-Shaped Revenue Operations Leader?
At this point, most Executive teams understand the importance of Revenue Operations in B2B startups.
Investing in Rev Ops has become more standard in recent years and startups are beginning to do so at an earlier stage than ever before. A challenge that comes along with this rapid, widespread adoption is a lack of understanding about how to hire the correct Rev Ops Leader for your organization.
The vast majority of companies today are hiring Rev Ops Leaders from a background in traditional Sales Ops.
And this very well may make sense, particularly for companies with a Sales Led approach. However, hiring from a Sales Ops background by default is the wrong move for a lot of companies.
Typical Background for Rev Ops Leaders Today
The overwhelming majority (~70%) of Revenue Operations Leaders today come from a Sales Operations or Sales Strategy background.
Given the evolution of Go-to-Market on the whole, it seems that the GTM Strategy powering these efforts (i.e. Rev Ops) is lagging behind.
Product Led Growth as a framework is still brand new. And many of these companies are hiring a Rev Ops Leader with the same ol' background as their Enterprise Sales peers - does that one-size-fits-all approach make sense to you?
Many of these market leaders don't seem to think so. They are not only re-thinking the background for a Revenue Operations Leader, they are taking it a step further and re-thinking the Chief Revenue Officer's function.
Zapier
Chief Revenue Officer was previously CMO at Confluent and VP of Growth (Self-Serve) at Dropbox.
Monday
Chief Revenue Officer was previously Director of Customer Analytics and Product Management.
PandaDoc
Chief Revenue Officer was VP of Mobile Growth at Adobe and then SVP of Growth at SecurityScorecard.
Lucid Software
SVP of Revenue Operations was previously VP of Growth Marketing and comes from a Marketing Analytics background.
ClickUp
VP of Rev Ops comes from a Marketing Analytics background
Benchling
Head of Rev Ops comes from a Field Sales Operations background
What is a T-Shaped Rev Ops Leader?
In short, someone with a T-Shaped skill set is capable in many areas and an expert in, at least, one. Modern Rev Ops is a challenging function given the number of distinct disciplines they own single-handedly:
- Sales Operations
- Marketing Operations
- Customer Success / Support Operations
- Business Intelligence / Data Analytics
- GTM Systems & Technology
You can’t possibly expect an individual to be an expert across each of these areas.
The role must be scoped in a way that’s tailor-made for your GTM strategy.
For example, just take Revenue Operations in the context of PLG vs. Sales Led organizations.
PLG startups approaching Revenue Operations in the same way as Enterprise SaaS orgs will really struggle. Why?
The inputs (and weight of each) are different enough that it’s not just a different calculation, you’re working with a different equation.
Rev Ops contributes to the same end goal (revenue) but the path to get there and GTM motions required is a fundamentally different function.
How do I know which area I want my Head of Rev Ops to bring a core competency and ability to go deep in?
For PLG
You might want a Rev Ops Leader specialized in Marketing. Why?
In PLG Rev Ops, usage data and product analytics are a CRITICAL ingredient to the data strategy and Go-to-Market playbook.
For that reason alone, Rev Ops Leaders in PLG startups should likely come from a Marketing Analytics background.
In this context, it's about separating analytics data (aggregate analytics living in the data warehouse) from operational data (transactional data specific to each business unit, mainly focused on GTM).
Your traditional Sales Ops Leader simply hasn't operated in this context in the past.
For Enterprise Sales
A core competency in Sales Ops likely make sense. Why?
Quite simply, they are more accustomed to driving top line revenue with a fluency in Sales strategy, territory management, and things like commission planning and incentive design.
This is exactly what you need when growing a more traditional Sales organizations - it's straightforward and you want someone with the playbook.
Scoping Rev Ops
The fundamental point here is that correctly adopting Revenue Operations means scoping the role in a way that’s tailor-made for your GTM strategy.
You can't easily look around and see what your peers are doing unless they are operating at an identical stage of growth, leverage the same Go-to-Market motions as you, and have a product with roughly the same complexity of use (i.e. Time to Value).
Before your team puts out a one-size-fits-all job description and starts interviewing Rev Ops Leaders with high pedigreed backgrounds ...
Take a step back. Conduct a thorough needs analysis and assessment of where your GTM organization may be unique compared to the broader market. Then, you can begin diagnosing the 'shape' of the Rev Ops Leader needed to excel.
Should the Head of Rev Ops report into the CRO?
The Chief Revenue Officer is effectively a Sales Leader.
This individuals come from a background in Sales Management prior to assuming the top spot - but they are still tactical in nature, often contributing to strategy but not providing the same level of data literacy as a traditional Revenue Operations Leader.
Based on that fact, why should the Head Revenue Operations - a Strategy, Technology, and Analytics Leaders - report into a Sales Leader?
Answer: They shouldn't.
Your Head of Revenue Operations should be rolling directly into the CEO (#1) or into the org of COO (#2) or CFO (#3).
The CRO is uniquely qualified for managing, motivating, and training the Sales organization.
But setting the strategy that guides those efforts?
It seems to call for a very different skill set.
A highly analytical, insights driven role well suited for individuals that have been developing that craft.
