As we covered in our Guide to Revenue Operations, dividing your sales, marketing, client success, finance, and other teams into silos only does two things: impede revenue growth and add friction to the customer journey.
Fortunately, many companies are recognizing the benefits of prioritizing cross-team collaboration and optimizing their tech stacks for maximum data visibility. In other words, business leaders are increasingly building Revenue Operations (RevOps) teams.
In order to maximize the impact of your RevOps team — or launch one in the first place — you need a qualified Revenue Operations Manager at the helm. This quick guide will show you how to evaluate, interview, and hire a top-notch RevOps manager. We’ll also address some challenges you may encounter when opening up your recruiting pipeline for this role.
Responsibilities of a Revenue Operations Manager
Revenue Operations Manager roles work differently for different companies. For a small or mid-sized business, it could be their very first RevOps hire. Hiring at this level offers them a way to test the waters, start driving revenue, and improve operational efficiency without investing in a full RevOps team right away.
For larger organizations, a Revenue Operations Manager will likely manage a team of RevOps analysts (a group of generalists, specialists, or both, which we’ll compare shortly). The manager serves as the point of contact, coordinating with other departments, delegating tasks, and delivering data insights to executives.
That said, a Revenue Operations Manager will typically do the following:
- Identify opportunities to drive revenue, such as go-to-market strategies, tactics to streamline the customer lifecycle, and potential sales process improvements
- Lead and enable their revenue operations team
- Work cross-functionally with customer success, sales, business operations, finance, product, marketing teams, and other stakeholders to share insights and centralize information
- Oversee systems and data administration and recommend tools to improve data quality, analysis, and reporting
- Manage dashboards and build revenue forecasts so teams can easily understand business health and meet goals
- Partner with leadership to strategize, operationalize, and analyze the impact of business initiatives
Two Ways To Structure Your RevOps Teams: Generalists vs. Specialists
An important step before you start the hiring process: think about how you’ll structure your RevOps team in the future (or how it’s already structured) and how your RevOps manager completes the picture. This will impact the kind of leadership skills your manager needs to bring to the table. Most companies organize their revenue teams one of two ways:
Team of RevOps Generalists
RevOps generalists are essentially jack-of-all-trades who are competent in multiple areas of revenue operations. In many cases, they’ve developed skills through hands-on experiences and by working in a variety of departments before transitioning to RevOps. Because of their diverse skill set, you could have each RevOps generalist serve as a business partner for a different audience segment, such as SMB clients and enterprise clients.
Generally speaking, larger companies opt for the RevOps generalist structure. These professionals are adept at approaching a business challenge from multiple angles and coming up with creative ways to tackle them.
Small companies that are bringing on their first hire or early hires can also benefit from this structure. A RevOps generalist is well-equipped to navigate the fast-paced environment and quickly changing nature of a small business.
Team of RevOps Specialists
RevOps specialists are skilled at a particular aspect of revenue operations, whether it’s a specific tactical area or software tool. For example, you could have a five-person team with a RevOps manager, Salesforce administrator, a Sales Ops analyst, sales enablement specialist, and data analyst, each collaborating with other departments as needed. You could have a specialist handle the deals desk, quotas, commissions, territories, and data, depending on your needs.
Mid-market companies typically often opt for this structure because a specialist can fill a clear gap in the sales process. Suppose a salesperson gets let go and the business needs someone to figure out how to reroute accounts. Do you give their accounts to the best selling rep or the lowest selling rep? A RevOps specialist may be better equipped to figure out which workflows need to be created and who they need to pull in to handle changes and requests.
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Qualifications of a Revenue Operations Manager: What To Look For
Some of the job titles you’ll see for a RevOps manager include Revenue Operations Manager and Manager of Revenue Operations. Professionals in a sales operations role could also be a great fit to grow into this role.
Above all, an excellent RevOps manager will serve as a guide for your organization, tying proposed initiatives (think of when someone says “If we just do this, everything will be better!”) to a data-backed lift in revenue.
With that in mind, your Revenue Operations Manager needs to demonstrate a clear ability to promote revenue growth, diagnose and solve problems, and communicate effectively. Look for a RevOps manager with a combination of the tangible and intangible skills below:
Job Experience
- Job history: Background in revenue operations, sales operations, or business operations, 3-5+ years of experience.
- Collaboration skills: Proven experience acting as a liaison between a variety of departments and stakeholders.
- Analytical skills: Ability to track metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), analyze them, and turn them into actionable strategies.
- Presentation skills: Must be able to present and share data in a polished, meaningful way, whether it’s a quick email, in-depth report, or presentation deck. Must communicate it in a clear, engaging manner.
- Relationship-building: Cross-functionally build trust with other departments and create relationships — a RevOps manager will be working with everyone in the organization.
Technology Skills
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Tools: Have a deep knowledge of CRM software and the administration of them, including Salesforce, HubSpot, and other major platforms; a Salesforce certification is helpful but not required.
- Microsoft Excel: Be familiar with using Excel to assess, manipulate, and analyze data. (No matter how sophisticated or comprehensive a company’s data management software is, Excel will likely be used at some point.)
- Demonstrate competency with:
- Learning Management Systems (LMS)
- Sales Enablement software
- Sales velocity tools like HubSpot, SalesLoft, Outreach, Groove, etc
- Sales Intelligence/Business Intelligence (BI) software
- Marketing Automation software
Intangible Qualities of a Great RevOps Candidate
We’ve rounded up some of the hard and soft skills a RevOps manager needs to have. But in a burgeoning industry, it’s important to understand the “secret sauce” that takes a candidate — experienced in RevOps or just starting out — from good to excellent. Here are some of the intangible characteristics we’ve seen that make a first-rate RevOps manager:
- Problem-solving: A RevOps manager should have the ability to solve issues in a thoughtful manner and in a way that makes sense for the rest of the business, usually from a sales perspective.
- Makes the uncertain, certain: A RevOps manager should be a data-driven decision-maker, deferring to concrete information to make judgments and give business guidance. They may run into seemingly mundane problems and questions, but they need to know how to evaluate, solve, escalate, or hand it off to the appropriate team member.
- Future-oriented: A RevOps manager should think two, three, and four steps ahead of decisions, just like a chess player, and anticipate how their decision-making will affect the organization down the road. They should ask questions like, “Am I setting a precedent? Can we sustain this? Should I be making this decision, or should it go higher up to the Director of RevOps or Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)?”
- Strong communicator and teacher: A RevOps manager is a kind of full-time teacher. They need to think through and manage complex processes, but also make them easy to understand for others, whether it’s a RevOps teammate, busy sales rep, or exec-level leader. New processes and workflows should be simple to teach and train, so they can be effectively implemented.
4 Examples of RevOps Manager Job Descriptions
Need to craft a job listing that will attract the best candidates for your Revenue Operations Manager position? You can draw inspiration from the job listings below, sourced from online job boards like Indeed, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor.
Example #1: Four Winds
Example #2: Brilliant Science
Example #3: Netrix
Example #4: Newslea Insightful Interview Questions and Prompts for a RevOps Manager
Insightful Interview Questions and Prompts for a RevOps Manager
- Why do you want to work in RevOps? What’s your motivation? (Is this candidate motivated by problem-solving success? Are they comfortable with frequently facing new challenges and getting into the weeds?)
- Give me an example of a time when you successfully organized a diverse group of people to accomplish a task. (Does this candidate have experience getting alignment on goals from different departments or teams?)
- Teach me about a hobby you’re interested in or just learned. (This shows you how each candidate’s mind works. Can they explain concepts and opportunities in-depth while also making them engaging and easy to understand?)
Common Challenges and Solutions When Hiring the Right RevOps Manager
Although the RevOps function is rapidly growing, it’s only become commonplace in organizations over the past decade or so. The candidate pool is still developing, and it’s rare to come across prospects with decades of RevOps experience, if any.
On the other hand, higher-level RevOps professionals with years of experience under their belts have their pick of jobs on the market. As a result, finding, recruiting, and closing on candidates may be a challenge.
Here are some quick solutions to help you discover the best RevOps talent and stand out from other employers:
Make Your RevOps Manager Benefits Package Competitive
The average revenue operations manager salary is $80,655 (as of July 2021). Take this figure with a grain of salt — a variety of factors feed into compensation level, such as industry type, experience level, location, skill set, and more. That said, make sure your offer package is attracting the right level of candidate so you can beat out other businesses vying for experienced candidates. Income isn’t the only lever to pull. Adjust employee perks like bonus structures, healthcare packages, and more to maintain a competitive edge.
Break Down Exactly How You’ll Equip Them for Success
RevOps success doesn’t just come down to one hire — your entire organizational ecosystem needs to be ready to support them. A simple way to differentiate your company is to specify how your leadership is gearing up to support (or already supports) a RevOps function, including the proper budget, software tools, and resources.
RevOps leaders often have the unenviable position of frequently saying “no” to proposals and tap-on-the-shoulder requests, while having to convince other departments to shift their processes and tactics. Explaining how you’ll have their back goes a long way.
Partner With Sales Assembly To Access a High-Quality Pool of Candidates
With the market as it is, your business will either be taking a chance on a candidate just transitioning to RevOps or fighting for the handful of people that actually have RevOps experience. But when you sign up with Sales Assembly, you can recruit from our pipeline of top talent. We assess and certify job seekers in a range of roles and also host bi-monthly nationwide virtual hiring events for our members.
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