SaaStr Podcast with Cherishma Shah - Part I

It's been a while now since I've been following SaaStr content. SaaStr is the world's largest community for business software. They're all about fast growth B2B software companies and everything that gravitates around it, from investing, sales, marketing, scaling and of course, Revenue Operations. SaaStr has been my go to platform to learn about RevOps and the quality and volume of content around the subject is amazing. Last week, I watched one of their CRO Confidential Podcast episodes with Cherishma Shah, SVP of GTM Strategy, Operations and Enablement, and there were some great insights around RevOps, what it means, how to scale, how to hire and many other topics.?

There were lots of things that were discussed, but the most interesting for me were about hiring, managing and building a RevOps department within an organization.

• 1st RevOps hire

In the episode, she talks about what the (ideal) 1st RevOps hire would look like. And even though that depends on the company business and moment, going for a generalist usually seems to be the decision that makes more sense. That's because there are many moving parts that need to be taken into consideration when building a RevOps department and some of those may require totally "opposite" skills. For example, a big part of Revenue Operators day to day activities is to align, communicate and influence other area's leaders, which requires not only great communication/soft skills, but also a deep understanding of how the business works. On the other hand, being able to analyze data, work with big databases and integrate systems are also part of the RevOps core function. Sure, depending on the business needs, you can always decide on hiring someone who has one skill or the other. But chances are that in the initial stages you won't need to analyze data with SQL Queries (spreadsheets are enough!) or have a super technical person to handle complicated integrations with your CRM. In the beginning, building the first layer and foundation of process, systems and data in a way that makes sense with the overall needs of the business is only possible by connecting the dots between the revenue departments.

• Biggest Opportunities

Besides talking about the main traits to look for in an ideal first RevOps hire, they've also gone through some of the biggest opportunities that this person should look for to make the highest impact. There are 2 main pillars that this person - in most cases - should prioritize. The first should be building a strong analytical foundation in terms of the business main KPI's (what does success look like and how to measure it?). I'd also add that, along with defining success, building the overall data structure (not only for the main KPI's) for the whole revenue functions would be the ideal (even if it's an audacious) goal.?

The second piece to this is defining the foundational process that will help the business run smoothly along with Marketing, Sales and Customer Success. There are a lot of things inside this bucket, like lead channels, campaigns, prioritization/scoring, qualifying information, handoff process, health scores, etc. and of course this will always be a work in process and that's where prioritizing the main parts of the overall process (which may vary from company to company) plays an essential role for success.?

Once these 2 main pillars are solid enough, then the 3rd focus area should be the systems part. It's really important to have these 2 things dialed before scaling/optimizing with 3rd party softwares, because scaling something that isn't working properly will only create bigger problems down the road. I'd say it's a similar mindset to building a MVP first, iterate on it and then scale.?And then we have the Go-To-Market strategies, which involves things like defining the Total Addressable Market (TAM), segments to be prioritized, personas and messaging.

• Where should RevOps sit within the org

Revenue Operations may mean different things in different companies and a big part of that depends on where the Revenue Operations department sits within the org. There are cases in which RevOps sits under the COO, but in some other instances, under the CRO. Also, it's not uncommon to see the Revenue Operators reporting to the CFO, especially because of the many overlaps between the various finance functions - like FP&A - and RevOps. There is no right or wrong, but there are ultimately 2 main issues to be solved for in relation to structure.?

The first is that the RevOps leader should act as a peer of the functional leaders, from the Head of Marketing all the way to the Head of Customer Success. That is specially important not only for them to work together, support each other and be aligned, but also to open the space to challenge them a little bit and discuss different point of views for the Go-To-Market strategy, which is really important. The other thing to be solved for - especially when the RevOps function sits a bit more far from the business, like finance -? is to make sure that Revenue Operators are deeply embedded with the GTM teams. That's the only way RevOps will be able to support with a critical, outside point of view, without being too disruptive with the natural flow of the business.