Hi friends - For my US audience, I hope you’re doing something fun with the long weekend! And to any of you who have served our country, thank you! 🙏 

This month, we’ve covered when to hire an SDR, an AE, and a VP of Sales.

Next up - RevOps. The final piece of this month’s GTM pie.

I’m working on a diagram to summarize my advice on managing and staffing a founder-led sales transition, and you’re getting a first look. 👀 

I’m still determining the best way to present this visually, but the content is solid, and I believe in working in public, so here we are! Progress > Perfection.

To summarize -

• At the earliest stages, the founder has to be everything to find product market fit.

• Founder-led sales transitions are best managed slowly by removing the founder from the funnel one layer at a time, top to bottom.

• Go-to-market fit should be achieved in 2 phases:

  • #1 - Make it repeatable

  • #2 - Make it scalable

When to hire RevOps

What is RevOps?

RevOps (short for Revenue Operations) is a function that connects your entire go-to-market team, processes, and systems.

RevOps primary objective is to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your marketing, sales, and customer success by aligning the people + optimizing the processes and systems.

Ok, so what do they actually ‘do’?

• Develop, implement, and optimize standard operating procedures and playbooks

• Develop reporting and analytics to measure and improve key go-to-market KPIs (conversions, deal length, churn, CAC etc)

• Own your go-to-market tech stack implementation, integration, training, and administration

When should I hire them?

There are some basic RevOps fundamentals you should aim to implement as soon as possible—literally when you start the company. We’ll cover those next month.

Then around $1-2mm ARR, I’d hire a fractional consultant or RevOps agency to build on that foundation.

By ~$2mm ARR, it’s time to get serious. Creating truly predictable and scalable growth will be impossible without strong revenue operations. It’s a requirement for GTM fit and beyond.

By $5-7mm ARR, if you don’t have a full-time headcount dedicated to this, I’d be concerned. By this point, you probably have a hefty W2 cost center, and if no one is managing their collective performance and keeping everyone aligned, you’ll be burning cash without proper visibility and accountability…and the wheels may fall off.

Questions? Shoot them over!

Next month, we’ll be digging into RevOps fundamentals. See ya there!

Want to learn more about how I support startups with go-to-market strategy & execution? Book a strategy call.

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With love and gratitude,