Senior Revenue Operations Manager

Overview

You work directly with AppFolio's CRO as their operational right hand, translating GTM strategy into executable plans across sales, marketing, and customer success. AppFolio sells property management software to real estate professionals—it's a competitive, mature market where they're a NASDAQ-traded leader competing against Yardi, RealPage, and others. Your job is to make sure the revenue engine runs smoothly: clean data, effective processes, accurate forecasting, and systems that scale.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Public (NASDAQ: APPF)

Size: 1,745 employees

Growth: Mature SaaS company in property management vertical. Stable, not hypergrowth startup mode.

Market Position: Established player competing against Yardi, RealPage, Buildium in a crowded but stable market. Real estate tech has predictable buying cycles and strong retention when implemented well.

GTM Reality

Your Scope: You support the entire revenue organization—likely multiple sales segments (SMB, mid-market, enterprise), inside and field teams, customer success, and marketing operations. At 1700 people, there's already established process. Your job is optimization and strategic projects, not building from scratch.

Reporting Structure: Direct line to CRO means high visibility but also high expectations. You're expected to have opinions, bring solutions, and challenge the status quo when data supports it.

Cross-functional Chaos: Property management software touches sales, onboarding, support, product, finance. You'll spend significant time aligning stakeholders who have competing priorities.

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Data/Analysis (30%) | Systems/Process (25%) | Meetings/Alignment (30%) | Strategic Projects (15%)

Key Activities

• Forecasting & Pipeline Analysis: You build and maintain the weekly/monthly/quarterly forecast models. This means pulling data from Salesforce, cleaning it, analyzing trends, identifying risks, and presenting it to CRO and exec team. When the forecast is wrong, everyone knows your name.

• GTM Process Design: You document, implement, and enforce how deals move through stages, when SEs get involved, what approvals are needed, how renewals are handled. This means creating flowcharts, updating Salesforce automation, training teams, and then checking if anyone actually follows it.

• Systems Administration: You're not the Salesforce admin, but you work closely with them. You define requirements for fields, reports, dashboards. You integrate tools (Outreach, Gong, ChurnZero, whatever they use). When something breaks or data looks wrong, you troubleshoot.

• Territory Planning & Compensation: You build the models for how accounts get assigned, quota gets set, and comp plans are structured. This involves spreadsheets, what-if scenarios, and managing feedback from sales leaders who always want more resources and higher quotas for their teams.

• Strategic Projects: CRO wants to enter a new segment? You build the business case. Want to change the sales methodology? You project manage the rollout. Need to improve lead routing? You design and implement it. These are 3-6 month initiatives with lots of dependencies.

• Executive Reporting: You create the monthly/quarterly business reviews. This means pulling data from multiple systems, building slides, writing narratives, and presenting to senior leadership. They will ask hard questions about why numbers moved.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You're the middleman between strategy and execution: CRO says "we need to improve conversion rates." Sales says "the leads are garbage." Marketing says "sales doesn't follow up fast enough." You need data to figure out who's right, then build a solution everyone will actually use.

• Politics and competing priorities: Every team wants something from you. Sales wants better pipeline visibility. Marketing wants better attribution reporting. CS wants renewal tracking. Finance wants accurate forecasting. You can't do everything at once, and saying no to a VP is uncomfortable.

• Data is always messier than you expect: Salesforce has duplicate records, missing fields, inconsistent stage progression. Reps don't update opportunities on time. Historical data has gaps. You spend more time cleaning data than analyzing it.

• Change management is slow: You can build the perfect process, but if reps don't adopt it, it doesn't matter. You'll spend significant effort on training, communication, and follow-up to drive adoption. Some people will resist because it's different from how they've always done things.

• You own the forecast but can't control it: When deals slip or close early, your forecast looks wrong even if it's because reps didn't update Salesforce or buyers made unpredictable decisions. You're accountable for accuracy but dependent on others' inputs.

What Success Looks Like

• Forecast accuracy within 5%: Your weekly forecast variance is tight, which means CRO trusts your numbers and can make confident decisions.

• Cross-functional projects ship on time: You successfully rolled out new territory model, improved lead routing, or implemented new sales methodology with measurable results.

• CRO uses you as thought partner: You're in strategic planning meetings, not just executing tasks. When big GTM decisions are being made, you're at the table with data-driven recommendations.

• Sales leaders stop complaining about ops: When ops is working well, it's invisible. Reps have the data they need, comp plans are clear, territories make sense, and systems work.

Who You Work With

Primary Stakeholders:

• CRO (your boss—you're their strategic execution arm)
• VP/Directors of Sales (you support their planning and performance tracking)
• Marketing Ops (lead routing, attribution, campaign ROI)
• CS Ops (renewal processes, expansion tracking)
• Finance (revenue recognition, bookings vs. billings)
• Salesforce Admin and BI/Analytics teams

What They Need From You:

• CRO needs accurate forecasts and strategic recommendations
• Sales leaders need clean pipeline data and fair territories
• Marketing needs attribution and lead quality analysis
• CS needs renewal risk tracking and expansion pipeline visibility
• Finance needs bookings data that reconciles with their systems

Requirements

• 5-7+ years in revenue operations or sales operations, ideally at a B2B SaaS company with multiple sales segments
• Advanced Salesforce skills: You need to understand objects, fields, workflows, reporting deeply—not just run reports, but design the data model
• Strong analytical skills: Comfortable in Excel/Google Sheets with pivot tables, lookups, modeling. SQL is a plus. You'll work with BI tools (Tableau, Looker, etc.)
• Experience with GTM tools: Familiarity with sales engagement (Outreach, Salesloft), conversation intelligence (Gong, Chorus), CS platforms (Gainsight, ChurnZero)
• Strategic thinking: You can look at a complex problem, break it down, identify root causes, and build a solution—not just follow playbooks
• Executive presence: Comfortable presenting to C-level. Can distill complex operational issues into clear narratives and recommendations
• Change management experience: You've successfully rolled out process changes across sales teams and know how to drive adoption
• Project management: You can juggle multiple initiatives, manage timelines, coordinate across teams, and deliver on commitments