Vice President, Revenue Operations

Overview

You run revenue operations for a public SaaS company doing $400M+ in revenue selling social media management software. You're responsible for the infrastructure, processes, systems, and analytics that enable Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success to hit their numbers. You manage multiple teams (sales ops, marketing ops, CS ops likely) and report to either the CRO or CFO. This is about operational excellence and data truth at scale—not experimental growth hacking.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Public (IPO'd, likely late-stage growth/mature)

Size: 1,810 employees

Growth: Stable public company growth. $40.5M Series D before IPO. Competing in crowded social media management space (Hootsuite, Buffer, Agorapulse). Recent focus on AI integrations and social listening capabilities.

Market Position: Established player in social media management—not the innovator anymore, but consistently ranked #1 in multiple G2 categories. Known for reliability and analytics depth. Fighting to maintain position against legacy competitors and newer AI-native tools.

GTM Reality

Revenue Streams You Support:

• SMB: Likely transactional, shorter sales cycles, volume play
• Mid-Market: Core revenue driver, consultative sales
• Enterprise: Longer cycles, multi-stakeholder, higher ACV
• Customer Success: Retention and expansion motion

GTM Structure:

• Large, segmented sales org (SMB, MM, Enterprise likely separate)
• Dedicated SDR/BDR teams
• Customer Success managing renewals and upsells
• Marketing generating inbound demand
• You don't own the go-to-market strategy—you enable it

Your Operational Scope:

• Salesforce is your main system (plus likely Gainsight, Gong, Outreach/Salesloft)
• You're managing data flows between 10-15+ systems
• You own territory planning, quota setting, comp plan execution
• You produce the weekly/monthly forecast that the board sees
• You're the person who gets called when the numbers don't add up

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Leadership/Strategy (30%) | Executive Reporting (25%) | Systems/Process (20%) | Team Management (15%) | Cross-functional Projects (10%)

Key Activities

• Forecasting & Planning: You own the weekly forecast call. You're reconciling what sales leaders say will close versus what the data shows. You're building the annual planning model with Finance—territories, quotas, headcount. You're in board meeting prep explaining variance to plan.
• Systems Architecture: You decide which tools to buy, how they integrate, and what data governance looks like. Right now there's pressure to add AI tools—you need to separate signal from hype. You're managing Salesforce admins, data analysts, and potentially engineers building custom integrations.
• Process Design: When sales cycles are elongating, you figure out why and what to fix. When lead conversion drops, you diagnose whether it's a marketing problem, a qualification problem, or a sales execution problem. You design the handoff processes between SDR→AE→CS.
• Analytics & Insights: Your team builds the dashboards leadership uses to run the business. You're analyzing pipeline health, win rates by segment, sales cycle trends, rep productivity. You're the person who can answer "why did we miss?" with data.
• AI/Automation Strategy: The post specifically mentions having "a strong point of view on GTM AI." You're evaluating conversation intelligence, AI SDR tools, predictive analytics, generative AI for email sequences. Most vendors overpromise—you need to know what actually works.
• Change Management: Every new process or system you roll out means getting buy-in from skeptical sales leaders who just want to sell. You spend time in QBRs, sales kickoffs, and 1:1s with regional VPs explaining why the new approach matters.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You're always the bearer of bad news: When the forecast is off, when pipeline coverage is weak, when data quality is trash—you're the one pointing it out. Sales leaders don't always want to hear it.
• System complexity at scale: At 1,810 employees with multiple GTM segments, you're managing a Rube Goldberg machine of tools. Something breaks weekly. Sales ops tickets are constant. "Salesforce is slow" becomes your problem.
• Competing priorities: Marketing wants different attribution logic. Sales wants faster quoting tools. CS wants better customer health scoring. Finance wants cleaner revenue recognition. You can't do everything.
• The AI hype cycle: Every vendor claims their AI will "10x productivity." Your job is to figure out what's real. You'll test tools that don't work and get pressure to adopt things before they're ready.
• Public company scrutiny: Your forecast miss doesn't just upset internal leadership—it moves the stock price. The pressure to be accurate is intense.
• Long feedback loops: You implement a new process—it takes 2-3 quarters to see if it actually improved outcomes. You don't get instant gratification.

What Success Looks Like

• Forecast accuracy within 5%: The quarterly forecast you give the CFO in week 10 matches actuals within a tight range
• System uptime & adoption: Sales reps actually use the tools you roll out. Salesforce data quality is >90% clean. Integrations don't break.
• Faster decision-making: Leadership can answer "How's the business performing?" in real-time instead of waiting for someone to pull a report
• Efficient growth: Revenue per sales rep increases. Sales cycle time decreases. Win rates improve. Your initiatives show ROI.
• Team retention: Rev ops people get poached constantly. You keep your best analysts and ops managers.

Who You're Supporting

Internal Stakeholders:

• CRO or Chief Customer Officer (likely your boss)
• CFO (close partnership on planning and forecasting)
• VP Sales (SMB, MM, Enterprise—multiple)
• VP Marketing
• VP Customer Success
• Individual AEs, SDRs, CSMs who need tools and data

What They Care About:

• Sales Leaders: "Give me clean pipeline data, accurate forecasts, and tools that don't slow my reps down"
• Finance: "Hit your forecast. Show me clean revenue recognition. Don't surprise me."
• CRO: "Help me hit the board's growth targets. Tell me where we're off track early enough to fix it."
• Reps: "Make my life easier. Don't add more admin work. Fix Salesforce when it's broken."

Requirements

• 12+ years of revenue operations experience (meaning you've scaled ops through hypergrowth and seen what breaks)
• 5+ years leading teams (you're managing managers, not just individual contributors)
• Public company or late-stage SaaS experience (you understand the scrutiny and rigor required)
• Deep Salesforce expertise (you've architected complex instances, not just used it)
• Strong perspective on AI/automation tools in GTM (you can evaluate vendor claims critically and know what actually drives productivity)
• Experience across multiple GTM functions—Sales, Marketing, CS (not just sales ops)
• Executive presence (you're presenting to the board and holding your own with C-suite peers)
• Analytical rigor (you can build financial models, analyze cohort data, and debug pipeline math)
• Change management skills (you've rolled out new systems and processes to skeptical, large teams)

The Real Question

Do you want to build infrastructure that enables a large, complex GTM motion—or do you want to be closer to the deals? This is a systems, data, and process role. You're not carrying quota. You're not closing deals. You're the person making sure the machine runs smoothly so others can hit their numbers. If you get satisfaction from operational excellence, clean data, and seeing your process improvements show up in the metrics—this makes sense. If you need to be in the arena, this will frustrate you.

The upside: VP-level role at a stable public company. Meaningful scope. Your work impacts hundreds of millions in revenue. The AI/automation piece means you're working on cutting-edge problems, not just maintaining legacy systems.

The downside: High pressure. Lots of stakeholders. Complex systems. You're always slightly behind—there's always another fire, another tool to evaluate, another process to optimize. And when revenue misses, people look at ops.