Director of Revenue Operations

Overview

You run Revenue Operations for Awardco, a 636-person employee recognition platform that just raised $165M Series B and is scaling into multiple products and global markets simultaneously. You're responsible for the GTM operating system - forecasting, territory/quota planning, capacity models, pipeline visibility, and cross-functional coordination. You manage a team (size unclear from post, likely 2-4 people) and report to a VP or CRO.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Series B (just closed $165M)

Size: 636 employees

Growth: Actively scaling - the post explicitly mentions going from single to multi-product and expanding globally post-funding

Market Position: Employee recognition/rewards space - competing in a crowded HR tech market against platforms like Workhuman, Bonusly, Kudos, and broader HRIS platforms adding recognition modules. Their Amazon Business partnership is likely a key differentiator (easier reward redemption).

GTM Reality

Current State:

• Moving from single product (recognition platform) to multi-product company
• Expanding into new geographies ("gone global" post-Series B)
• Serving businesses of all sizes per their website, but likely focusing upmarket with $165M in the bank
• Sales team probably 30-50 people at this headcount, split between new business and account management

Your Challenge:

• Systems and processes were built for a smaller, simpler business
• Now need to support multiple products with different sales motions
• International expansion means new market dynamics, pricing models, comp structures
• Leadership needs better visibility and predictability as they scale

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Strategic Planning (30%) | Systems/Data (25%) | Cross-functional Coordination (25%) | Team Management (20%)

Key Activities

• Forecasting & Pipeline Reviews: Build and own the methodology for weekly/monthly forecast calls. You're training sales leaders on how to inspect their pipelines, identifying where the model breaks, and constantly refining category definitions and weighting. Leadership doesn't trust the forecast yet - that's why you're being hired.

• Territory & Quota Planning: Design territory models that balance patch size, rep capacity, market opportunity, and product fit. Run annual and mid-year quota setting. Fight with sales leaders about what's realistic. Build coverage models to determine how many reps you need where. Redo all of this when they launch product #2 and #3.

• Systems Architecture: Own Salesforce configuration, data flow between marketing automation/CRM/data warehouse, dashboard design, and integration strategy. You're not clicking buttons all day (you have ops analysts for that), but you're deciding what gets built and why. Lots of time in Slack/Zoom with Sales Systems, Marketing Ops, and Data teams.

• Multi-product GTM Design: Figure out the go-to-market mechanics for new products. Do existing AEs carry both products? Separate teams? How does lead routing work? What's the comp structure? How do you forecast something with no historical data? You're building the playbook in real-time.

• Business Reviews & Insights: Prepare exec-level pipeline reviews, QBRs, and board materials. Explain why the forecast changed. Identify which segments/regions/products are performing. Answer questions like "why is win rate down?" or "should we double the SDR team?"

• Cross-functional Projects: Constant coordination with Marketing (lead quality, MQL definitions), CS (retention forecasting, expansion motions), Finance (bookings vs. revenue timing), and Product (usage data, product-qualified leads). You're in 10-15 hours of meetings per week just aligning stakeholders.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Building the plane while flying it: They're scaling fast across multiple dimensions (products, geographies, team size). Any model you build will be outdated in 6 months. You'll constantly be in "good enough for now" mode rather than "perfect system" mode.

• Political navigation: Sales leaders want bigger territories and lower quotas. Marketing wants credit for pipeline. Finance wants conservative forecasts. CS wants more resources. You're the referee with no authority, just influence. Lots of time spent getting alignment on definitions and priorities.

• Data quality is probably a mess: Fast-growing companies have Salesforce instances held together with duct tape. Fields aren't standardized, historical data is inconsistent, integrations break. You'll spend more time cleaning data and investigating anomalies than you'd like.

• Ambiguity on the new products: How do you forecast something that doesn't exist yet? How do you plan territories when you don't know the TAM or sales cycle? How do you set quotas with no benchmarks? You'll be making educated guesses and adjusting constantly.

• You're the bad news bearer: When forecasts slip, you're explaining why to leadership. When territories are unbalanced, reps complain to you. When quotas feel too high, you're the face of the decision (even if you didn't set them).

What Success Looks Like

• Forecast accuracy within 10%: Leadership can actually rely on your pipeline projections to make hiring, spend, and board commitments
• Clean territory transitions: Annual planning happens without mass chaos, rep complaints are minimal, and patches are relatively balanced
• Faster decision-making: Questions like "should we hire more AEs or SDRs?" get answered with data in days, not weeks
• System uptime: Sales and CS teams can access the data they need without asking you for one-off reports
• New product launches don't break everything: You've built enough flexibility into systems and processes that adding products is hard but manageable

Who You're Working With

Direct Partners:

• CRO/VP Sales: Your primary stakeholder - they need accurate forecasts, smart territory plans, and pipeline visibility
• Sales Leaders: You're constantly in forecast calls, pipeline reviews, and planning meetings with them
• Marketing Ops: Aligning on lead definitions, routing, attribution, and campaign performance
• Sales Systems/Salesforce Admin: Collaborating on system architecture and data flow
• Finance: Coordinating on bookings/revenue forecasting and comp plan modeling
• CS Leadership: Building retention forecasting and expansion motion visibility

Your Team:

• Likely managing 2-4 people (not specified in post but typical for this level)
• Mix of ops analysts, deal desk, potentially systems admin
• You're hiring/building this team while doing the work

Requirements

• 5+ years in Revenue Operations: You've owned forecasting, planning, and systems at a B2B SaaS company - ideally through a major inflection point (Series B/C, new product launch, international expansion)
• Experience with multi-product GTM: You've navigated the complexity of supporting multiple products/sales motions, not just a single ACV band
• Strong systems background: Deep Salesforce knowledge, comfortable with data tools (SQL, BI platforms), can design system architecture
• Forecasting methodology expertise: You've built forecast models from scratch, not just maintained someone else's spreadsheet
• Territory & quota planning experience: You've designed coverage models, run annual planning processes, and balanced capacity across segments
• Cross-functional influence: You can get Marketing, Sales, CS, and Finance aligned without having authority over any of them
• Comfort with ambiguity: You don't need perfect data or clear answers to make progress - you can build frameworks in messy, fast-changing environments
• Strong communication: You can explain technical concepts to executives and strategic decisions to operators