Director of Revenue Operations

Overview

You'll own revenue operations at Slang AI - a 65-person startup selling AI phone answering to restaurants. You're building GTM infrastructure from scratch: setting up systems, defining processes, creating reporting, and trying to bring data-driven rigor to an early-stage sales org that's still figuring out its motion. You'll work directly with the sales team (likely small - maybe 5-10 reps) and report to leadership.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Early (likely Seed/Series A based on 65 people)

Size: 65 employees

Growth: Hiring for both RevOps Director and GTM Engineer suggests they're scaling the sales team

Market Position: Category creator in restaurant AI - competing against humans answering phones and legacy restaurant tech

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• Likely 70-80% Outbound - cold calling restaurant owners/managers who aren't actively looking for AI phone solutions
• 20-30% Inbound - word of mouth, some content/SEO from restaurants researching "phone answering solutions"
• Minimal partner/referral motion (too early)

SDR/AE Structure: Unknown, but at 65 people likely a small team - maybe combined SDR/AE or full-cycle AEs

SE Support: Probably no dedicated SEs at this size - AEs do their own demos

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Human hosts/hostesses (the status quo), generic AI voice assistants, legacy restaurant phone systems

How They Differentiate: Purpose-built for restaurants, 24/7 availability, integrations with OpenTable/SevenRooms/Tripleseat

Common Objections: "AI can't handle our complex menu", "Our guests want to talk to a real person", "We can't afford another vendor", "What about when the system fails?"

Win Themes: Never miss a reservation, handle peak hours, cross-sell between locations, free up staff for in-person service

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Systems/Tools (35%) | Process/Enablement (30%) | Reporting/Analysis (25%) | Firefighting (10%)

Key Activities

• CRM Implementation/Optimization: You're likely implementing or fixing their CRM (probably HubSpot or Salesforce). This means data hygiene, pipeline stages, automation, fields that actually make sense for restaurant sales. Lots of cleanup from early-stage messiness.
• Sales Process Definition: The sales process probably isn't documented. You'll interview reps, map what's actually working, create stage definitions, handoff criteria, and try to get everyone following the same playbook. Expect resistance.
• Dashboard/Reporting Creation: Building reports that leadership actually needs - pipeline velocity, conversion rates by stage, rep performance, forecast accuracy. You'll spend time in Looker/Tableau/whatever BI tool they have (or you'll pick one).
• Tool Stack Management: Managing the tech stack - CRM, sales engagement platform (Outreach/Salesloft?), calling tools, Slack integrations, potentially a data warehouse. Fielding constant "this tool isn't working" messages.
• Comp Plan Design: Working with finance/leadership on commission structures, quota setting, SPIFs. This gets political fast when reps think quotas are unfair.
• Territory/Lead Routing: Deciding how to assign restaurants to reps - by geography, restaurant type, size? Setting up routing rules. Dealing with complaints about "unfair" territories.
• Cross-functional Meetings: Lots of syncs with marketing (lead quality issues), product (what data do we need?), finance (forecast accuracy), and sales leadership ("why aren't we hitting plan?").

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You're building infrastructure while the business model is still evolving - you'll set up processes that become obsolete when leadership pivots the go-to-market strategy
• Restaurant sales are notoriously difficult - high volume, low ACVs, price-sensitive buyers. The data will likely show frustrating conversion rates and long payback periods
• Early-stage chaos means constant firefighting - broken integrations, data quality issues, reps complaining that systems don't work, leadership asking for reports that require data you don't have
• You're probably a team of one (maybe two with the GTM Engineer). You need to be hands-on with everything from Salesforce admin work to comp plan modeling to SQL queries
• Getting reps to actually use the systems you build requires constant reinforcement and dealing with "this is slowing me down" pushback
• The company is small enough that a bad quarter means everyone feels it - you'll be in the hot seat to explain why numbers are down

What Success Looks Like

• Sales team can actually find and update data in CRM without asking you for help
• Leadership gets weekly/monthly reports automatically instead of one-off Slack requests
• Forecast accuracy improves from "wild guess" to within 15-20% of actuals
• New rep ramp time decreases because there's actual documentation and process
• You ship the GTM Engineer's projects (integrations, automations, custom tools) successfully

Who You're Working With

Primary Stakeholders:

• Sales Leadership (VP Sales or Head of Sales) - needs forecasts, pipeline visibility, performance data
• Sales Reps (5-10 people) - need tools that work, fair territories, clear comp plans
• CEO/Founders - want to understand unit economics, what's working/not working, strategic insights
• Finance - need accurate revenue forecasts, commission calculations, deal approval workflows

What They Care About:

• Sales Leadership: "Can I trust the forecast?" "Why is rep X underperforming?" "How do we hit plan?"
• Sales Reps: "Is my commission calculated correctly?" "Why is this tool so clunky?" "How do I pull this report?"
• Finance: "What's closing this month?" "Are these commission numbers right?" "What's our CAC payback?"

Requirements

• 5+ years in revenue operations, sales operations, or similar analytics/systems role
• Hands-on experience with CRM platforms (Salesforce and/or HubSpot) - you need to be admin-level proficient, not just a user
• Strong analytical skills - comfortable with Excel/Google Sheets, bonus if you know SQL and can query data warehouses
• Experience at early-stage startups (seed/Series A/B) where you've built processes from scratch, not just inherited them
• Comfortable with ambiguity and changing priorities - the plan will change, and you need to roll with it
• Technical enough to work with a GTM Engineer on integrations and automation projects
• Ability to translate between technical and business stakeholders - you'll talk to engineers and executives in the same day
• Willingness to do unglamorous work - data cleanup, manual reporting, troubleshooting broken integrations