When building a best in class Revenue Operations team, you not only need to find the right talent, you also need to know how to utilize them. Nothing can hamstring great RevOps talent like the wrong organizational structure.
You may have someone who is extremely skilled in RevOps but not very skilled in the art of people management. If you give them a team of direct reports it will distract from their strengths and do a disservice to their direct reports. Or, if you have eager, young analyst talent with no strong leader to develop them, you will be left with a team of people with no direction and one foot out the door.
The best RevOps teams pair hard working and intellectually curious talent, with an org structure that plays to their strengths. Below are a list of Do's and Don’ts that should help you craft a top of the line RevOps team.
If you are looking for a more extensive resource on how to resource and structure your RevOps org, try our Free RevOps Team Size Calculator and Team Structure Guide.
Don’t overcomplicate your Org structure in RevOps
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- If you have a seasoned VP who understands each aspect of the funnel, you do not need to place too many managers underneath them to execute on projects across the funnel
- You should begin to specialize roles within your team as you grow, but also identify who should inherit direct reports when your leader’s direct reports number hits 6
- Once you have 6 direct reports under your Director/VP, you should then consider which teams need to become specialized and who your analyst level employees should roll into
Do flatten the org structure as much as you can whilst maintaining efficiency
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- Your analysts should not be too far removed from leadership, if they have no clarity or communication from the VP at all you may have created too many layers of reporting
- A strong, mature RevOps organization will have their analysts and stakeholders aligned and directed via a Program Manager. This role will allow for the VP to have someone who can coordinate projects across numerous stakeholders in weekly sprints without needing to get too in the weeds themselves
- As you grow to 4-5+ people on your team, the Program Manager may be an existing RevOps Manager-level talent (maybe Sales, Marketing, or CS Ops) but this is more of a stop gap solution. As you continue to scale you will need a dedicated person to direct your junior employees and corral stakeholders across various teams.
Do ensure that your team members (especially the junior ones) have an understanding of their growth path
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- RevOps is still very new! Many of the people getting in at the analyst level have no idea what a career path in RevOps looks like.
- If you want to ensure that you are developing your young talent to be future leaders of the RevOps Org (which can be your finest pool of talent), make sure you communicate the growth options to them early and often, and make sure those growth paths are real
- This will allow you to identify places to specialize your team members as you scale and mature. Find what these junior employees are best at and let them grow into a senior specialized position
Do define your swim lanes
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- As we mentioned before a RevOps “Program Manager” can be a great role to get this done
- You need to ensure that each of your employees have a balanced workload and a justifiable level of responsibilities within the Org
Don’t create silos
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- As you craft these swim lanes you will find that each person becomes more and more of an expert in their area and each team member’s workload becomes clearer and more manageable
- The program manager then takes each expert and utilizes their skills in large cross functional projects
Do speak up as a RevOps Leader and continue to pitch your vision at the Executive level
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- This may not sound like an “Org Structure” recommendation but the unfortunate truth is that not every RevOps leader has the luxury of reporting into an executive that truly “gets it”
- If you follow some of the guidelines below, you will find the task of justifying your department’s value becomes much easier
- Each person has a tremendous growth potential and a clearly defined role that plays into the big picture of your leader’s “vision”
- When that vision is clearly displayed and executed upon by a carefully structured RevOps org, those budget debates get that much easier
We hope this was a helpful read and wish all readers the best in crafting the next great RevOps team. We are always looking to hear from new voices in the space and assist them in any way we can, so subscribe below to learn more.
