Overview
You're the operational backbone for Common Room's GTM team. You manage Salesforce, build dashboards, optimize sales processes, and enable reps. You report to Dan Brayton (new VP RevOps) who's professionalizing the GTM motion. Expect a mix of systems admin work, analytics, and strategic projects.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | RevOps generalist - systems + analytics + enablement |
| Sales Motion | N/A - you support the sales team, not selling directly |
| Deal Complexity | N/A - your job is making deals flow smoothly |
| Sales Cycle | N/A - you're measured on rep productivity, not revenue |
| Deal Size | N/A |
| Quota (est.) | N/A - measured on operational metrics (data quality, forecast accuracy, process adoption) |
Company Context
Stage: Series B - scaling fast, need ops rigor as team grows
Size: 146 employees - small ops team (probably 2-4 RevOps people total)
Growth: VP RevOps hired 2 months ago signals investment in GTM infrastructure
Market Position: Growing fast means systems and processes need to catch up to revenue goals
GTM Reality
Team Structure: You support 10-15 quota-carrying reps (AEs, SDRs) plus CSMs
Systems You Own: Salesforce (primary), Outreach/SalesLoft (sequencing), Gong (call recording), HubSpot (marketing), Common Room's own product (dogfooding)
Reporting Lines: You report to VP RevOps, partner closely with Sales leadership and Marketing Ops
Scope: End-to-end GTM ops - lead routing, pipeline management, forecasting, comp planning, enablement
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Salesforce Admin (30%) | Analytics/Reporting (25%) | Process Improvement (20%) | Enablement (15%) | Ad-Hoc Requests (10%)
Key Activities
- Salesforce management: You're the admin. Building fields, updating page layouts, managing security, troubleshooting errors. Reps constantly ping you: "Why isn't this syncing?" or "Can you add a field for X?" You're also cleaning data - duplicate accounts, missing info, wrong stage assignments.
- Pipeline analytics: Building weekly pipeline reports for leadership. How much pipeline by stage? What's the forecast? What's conversion rate by rep? You're pulling data from Salesforce, building dashboards in Tableau/Looker, presenting to exec team. You catch inconsistencies (reps marking deals closed-won that aren't actually closed).
- Process optimization: AEs complain deals are stuck in legal for weeks. You build a process to track contract redlines. SDRs complain about lead routing delays. You automate assignment rules. CSMs don't have visibility into Sales notes. You fix the handoff process.
- Tools evaluation: Sales team wants a new prospecting tool. You run the evaluation (demo 5 vendors, build cost-benefit analysis, implement winner, train team). Lots of tools sound great in demos but break in production.
- Forecasting and planning: Every Monday you update forecast with AE input. Every quarter you help build territory plans and set quotas. Lots of spreadsheet modeling - how many AEs do we need to hit $20M? What should each one carry?
- Enablement support: New AE starts, you run Salesforce training. Product launches new feature, you update talk tracks and battlecards. You're not a full enablement manager but you support learning initiatives.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- You're reactive 50% of the time. Reps need help NOW, and your strategic project gets delayed. Salesforce breaks during a demo, and you're firefighting.
- Data quality is a constant battle. Reps don't update stages, enter wrong close dates, skip required fields. You're nagging people to clean up their data. It's tedious.
- You're the "no" person sometimes. Reps want custom objects, 10 new fields, integrations that cost $50K. You have to push back on scope creep and bad ideas. Creates friction.
- Stakeholders have competing priorities. Sales wants speed, Finance wants controls. Marketing wants attribution, Sales wants simplicity. You're mediating disagreements.
- Small company means you wear many hats. At a big company, there's a Salesforce admin, a BI analyst, an enablement manager. Here, it's all you.
- VP is new, so you're building the plane while flying it. Processes don't exist yet. You're creating them from scratch, which is exciting but chaotic.
What Success Looks Like
- Salesforce data quality above 90% (no major gaps or errors)
- Forecast accuracy within 10% of actuals each quarter
- Reps spending more time selling, less time on admin (measure via time tracking)
- Fast lead routing (under 5 minutes for inbound, immediate for high-intent)
- Leadership has real-time visibility into pipeline health
- Tool adoption rates above 80% for new systems you implement
Who You're Working With
Primary Partners:
- VP RevOps (your boss - sets strategy, you execute)
- Sales leadership (VPs, Directors - they need forecasts and insights)
- AEs and SDRs (your internal customers - you enable them)
- Marketing Ops (you coordinate on lead flow and attribution)
- Finance (you provide revenue data for planning)
- IT/Eng (you work with them on integrations and security)
What They Care About:
- Sales: "Make my life easier, don't slow me down"
- Leadership: "Give me accurate data to make decisions"
- Marketing: "Prove our campaigns are driving pipeline"
- Finance: "Help me forecast and track to plan"
Requirements
- 2-4 years in Revenue Operations, Sales Operations, or similar role
- Salesforce admin experience (certifications a plus but not required)
- Strong analytical skills - comfortable with SQL, Excel, BI tools
- Process-oriented mindset - you see broken workflows and fix them
- Technical enough to manage integrations and troubleshoot systems
- Communication skills - you're translating between sales, eng, and leadership
- Comfortable with ambiguity - you're building processes from scratch