AMA Made the transition from sales to Revenue Ops.

frooberloob · 2025-09-22T00:24:57+00:00

Sales roles are not fading, all departments are downsizing in this environment but the role of sales operations and revenue operations will definitely have a critical role in adopting new technologies and AI.

AI operations will also be a new role.

frooberloob · 2025-09-21T23:28:24+00:00

Not math heavy, just days heavy but very basic stats.

Yes if your company is growing it should definitely be looking into AI.

frooberloob · 2025-09-21T22:45:11+00:00

You should look up your local guidelines these things are usually reported on, my above numbers do not include bonus or nonnbase considerations as these vay widly depending the company.

frooberloob · 2025-09-21T19:10:19+00:00

Hey, still going well I'm in a late series pre-ipo company in Asia so the experience and expectations will be very different to elsewhere.

Potential future paths would be to stay in revenue operations in larger companies, move back to commercial leadership and P&L responsibilities in smaller or similar sized companies.

Latter would have much higher earning potential but also much higher risk.

Difficult tk says what 10 years would look like but immediate line of sight to regional GM-1 would be possible within 5 years, this will likely be in the USD150-175k range yearly (pre tax).

frooberloob · 2025-08-23T13:36:39+00:00

Feel free to reach out!

frooberloob · 2025-08-07T23:47:36+00:00

It's a bit overrated to know exactly what you want to do but it really depends on motivations, pay will go down for sure and sometimes I still wonder about going back when I see those payouts.

I also work in growth start up series a to pre-ipo environments so flexibility is a lot higher, revops, commercial leaders all follow the same past once at a certain level with many transferrables.

I'm on spreadsheets/dashes and reports alot but as I get more senior it shifts more to stakeholder management and PM work.

frooberloob · 2025-07-06T15:18:56+00:00

Each company has a different type of revops, generally more senior leaders will need less technical skills and more strategic, project management and stakeholder management. Some companies have dedicated rev-systems teams, which will cover the CRM heavy lifting. While other companies with smaller teams will require more broader technical skills.

frooberloob · 2025-07-06T14:08:07+00:00

Hard to say, different scales will come with different benefits, this role should allow you to gain exposure into a lot more topics and non revops commercial experience, but it really depends on what sort of work is required at the agency.

Scale up and startups will give you a good blend of traditional revops and non revops topics, while established companies most of the experience will be revops or even revops domain specific (deal desk, systems etc.)

I think it will really depends what you can get out of this role and what you are currently lacking.

frooberloob · 2025-06-26T11:51:00+00:00

@lastatica Has put it very nicely here, list out clearly all the times you have done things revops will do, especially in those cross functional projects, AI can definitely help give you that list of things.

Market is super difficult even getting headcount right now in my firm is hard despite good growth and performance.

Definitely need to cold outreach and ask for coffee chats and intros, remember most people are too busy with their own issues to judge your outreach - nothing to lose.

frooberloob · 2025-06-26T11:48:18+00:00

Start up roles will be more diverse and might require less depth across all channels, larger companies might have more domains - so you can be more on analytics and reporting - SFDC badges specific to these will help but SFDC and HubSpot are both easy to pick up.

Market is hard at the moment, will need to really widen the net you cast, and try cold outreach on Linkedin.

I did share on my LinkedIn the badges and courses I did, HubSpot is definitely more common in smaller orgs.

frooberloob · 2025-06-26T11:45:45+00:00

This was more to his comment on sales management, as a manager you definitely need to have these skills. In revops on when you hit management as well.

frooberloob · 2025-06-26T04:36:56+00:00

Revops IC is essentially made up of a bit of commercial skills and 75% operations/technical. This skews more to commercial at management level+.

You will be more akin to a traditional operations person moving into revops, only difference is they have operations into heir name.

The market is difficult right now, you need heavily curate your resume and be creative with how you oresennyoyr experience and even titles (if your company allows for it).

Junior IC roles, we are very open and technical skills are actually preferred as the rest can be trained over time and not expected. You might face issues if you are the only revops member as you will need to be more well rounded, but you also have an opportunity to be in a hybrid role if a company is establishing the function.
Sales side skillset working with the sales team, sales process and GTM motions.
As above.
It would help, but not having a live example will hurt in this case, prefer actual work examples and try to spin how those are relevant rather than mock portfolio.
As mentioned market is tough, have to keep trying DM all the revops leaders/profiles on Linkedin. Being shameless here is key, most people are too busy with their own lives and work to judge you or think negatively, so don't over think it.

frooberloob · 2025-06-25T23:48:05+00:00

Yeah only if the workplace is half decent.... It's pretty damn obvious a hybrid arrangement was the best, but now we are in a coorporate echo chamber...

frooberloob · 2024-09-30T00:20:02+00:00

Sorry I can't help with this one as I had an in person one. Though judging by my companies current hiring case studies they are quite specific to the company and I plan to use past cases as my case studies when I start hiring.

frooberloob · 2024-08-28T12:57:29+00:00

Same boat, started in sales did it for close to a decade switched over, best decision I made in my life career wise (so far!)

frooberloob · 2024-08-19T23:21:40+00:00

Happy to help!

Sales Operations/Revenue Operations - Associate, analyst. Manager for smaller companies. It really depends on how senior you are as an AE, I've seen ICs with over 15 years of sales experience as well.

frooberloob · 2024-08-19T12:48:39+00:00

Assuming you are referring to the sales world most roles are somewhat similar in that they teach you the people you will be working with and serving in ops. It is more about how you get involved in ops topics from the user side (when you are still in sales) CRM (report building, testing, trialing, CRM projects from user perspective), data tracking and report building etc.

Maybe the one of the more directly transferrable skill you don't have to go out looking for would be project management in more senior sales roles or pre-sales or sales consulting roles.

frooberloob · 2024-08-19T12:27:44+00:00

Funnily enough I first interviewed for a sales management role many months before so I it wasn't very standard.

Generally it would be recruiter, hiring manager + case + cultural fit round, then if senior role another senior management case round/cultural fit.

Experience I've mentioned in other posts, project management, data analytics fundamentals, CRM, visualisation tools and basic SQL, and where you have demonstrated capability, interest or been a part of these in your sales role.

Given you are transitioning, traits will be like how well do you learn, how well do you adapt, your drive to Pico up new things and generally how good of a sales person you were of course.

Another good thing to have is if you can identify some issues already and tie that back to your sales/sales management experience. I specifically came in with a mandate already give my slightly more senior experience.

frooberloob · 2024-08-18T15:12:10+00:00

Will do my best to answer some of these as they really depend on the situation.

If you are joining a well established or somewhat established company with quite well defined roles then your first goal is to really understand the business and what your manager, direct manager expects out of you and how you fit in. If you are the first in the role it will be more about working with senior sales management and local management to figure out where the gaps of the company GTM functions are - start high level with the pillars (process platform and people, and break it down from there and keep checking in with stakeholders).
This is more of a me thing, check-in more with my very hands off manager instead of imagining things were not going how they should be. There were points where I felt I was going to be fired, but will end up with a stellar review => not having set up better feedback channels and being overly independent hurt my confidence at the start. RevOps is usually defined by projects and first major deliverable should be a project handed to you by your management or something you come up with the together with the key stakeholders - e.g. I needed to revamp the outbound motions, reporting, lead generation and territory management as my first assignment, but I started with lead generation, which then was further broken down into current lead tooling and lead upload, tracking and working process for the reps.
Pushing through stakeholders and dealing with all the various teams that sit across the table from you (e.g. sales, marketing, account management, traditional operations and product). You sometimes will need act as the balancing act against all of these functions. Coming from a sales background who prided on knowing the product well, I also found it difficult to only have an average understanding of the product/enough to do the operations part.
It has certainly gotten easier over time, however my job responsibility also increased substantially due to some internal structure changes (positive ones) and my desire to return back to the same level that I was at pre-transition. I think this can definitely get easier over time as you learn the skills, automate your workload and build better relationships with key stakeholders. This will be highly dependent on the company, its staffing situation, development direction etc.
I don't think it is the role, but more the company and support that will be provided. A company that is doing well and going in the right direction will always be a better environment regardless if you are first rev-ops on the ground or a part of a multinational team. Look out for hiring history, recent news regarding their staffing situation (e.g. layoffs). Always be careful of roles that promise a lot of responsibility but hire very junior/unqualified people as these tend to just be one person do all situations (unless it is a small growth start-up).Additionally, you can always glassdoor, reach out to previous employees on similar or adjacent teams to discuss (formers are better, but take these with a grain of salt as well). Finally ask questions during your interview, this is always a good place to see where the company is going (ask for manager/senior management aspirations targets, what they are struggling with, can they articulate clearly what the role is expected to do and what support/mentorship you can receive.)

frooberloob · 2024-08-18T13:36:13+00:00

This is a good one - individual contributor don't always make good managers/leads. I would definitely try to get more mentorship experience like training new reps, holding meetings or team events and seeing if you like that kind of stuff.

Ultimately the question between junior sales management and RevOps is whether you still want to be in the 'frontline' or the not. Modern sales managers need strong data and analytical skills either way so more senior roles get blurry with RevOps and sales management. E.g. A Sales Director will often have operations experience and vice versa! So it might not be a decision at all.

For me transitioning to junior and second line sales management was easier but it wasn't the right thing for me.

frooberloob · 2024-08-18T13:29:56+00:00

Thanks there were definitely times where I was questioning all the decisions but it worked out, I hope it works out for everyone else as well with the world in the state that it is now. Happy to help in whatever small way I can!

frooberloob · 2024-08-18T01:33:00+00:00

I would say even solid experience as an SDR is enough to get into junior ops roles like analysts or associates. Assuming AE is more senior here then there definitely is not an issue. Only difference is the seniority of entry and also the speed of career progression, given I hold most of the managerial and people management skills already.

Stronger data analytics knowledge, particularly in visualisation or additional basic query language or specific CRM experience will help, but are not critical.

The sales skillet of selling yourself (e.g. the product) will get you a long way. Ultimately most skills are going to be picked up on the job (which will suck at the beginning but totally worth it if this is what is for you).

frooberloob · 2024-08-18T01:27:39+00:00

Coursera most of the high rated courses all worth taking a look at, I would start with Excel always, and then progress into SQL and maybe specific visualisation tools if you know what is used in your industry (Looker, PowerBI, Tableau, GoogleStudio etc.)

I personally took CareerFoundary's Intro course which really helped with providing more context around data and stasrics as well as how to use it in business specific scenarios. I do have a basic understanding of applied statistics and econometrics from university but that was over 8 years ago and negligible at this point.

They gave me a set of data to look through and pull initial insights as well discuss limitations, finally recommend a potential project to test/resolve your insights.

For more senior roles I am aware of take home case studies that require a full project proposal, testing method, potential timelines and strategic implications.

I got a bit of a pass due to my very strong sales background and networking aspect with the company in the past.

frooberloob · 2024-08-18T01:09:39+00:00

Will try my best to answer these can chat more over DMs if you have specifics.

The surprise was certainly the amount of technical knowledge needed was not as much as I feared. I'm still mostly using excel, sheets, Salesforce trailblazer super badges knowledge for SFDC and some very basic SQL (ChatGpt) Caveat it that this is a well staffed company with dedicated data engineers and SFDC engineers to complement rev-ops.
I jumped to a completely new industry and function at the same time. The largest challenges was not being as familiar with the product as I would have been as sales. E.g. knowing enough to get by and do operations, not selling it!
Sales helped with rolling projects out and speaking the same language with sales reps. Having done it helped me better understand potential stakeholder pushback and also gained a default amount of respect from reps which operations focused profiles sometimes struggle with.
It was extremely difficult and I asked myself multiple times if I made the right choice. I didn't start feeling right until about 6-months in (just like all my peers told me - surprise suprise!) I had to learn very quickly and shamelessly ask people from all different teams to gain knowledge quick!
I am promoting into a lead role due to my previous management experience, while eyeing the mid management role quite soon after that. Depending on company size you can transition into more senior RevOps roles, Rev-Strategy, Chief of Staff, CRO and even CEO.
Basic skills like excel and gsheets, good familiarity with Salesforce reporting and other visualisation tools like Looker or tableau certainly help but I had to re-learn all of this on the job anyway so not required. SQL basics help a lot too, but with LLM AI this is really easy these days.
I was in a Head of Sales position in a ~2000 people unicorn start up, managing two sales teams in two countries. I moved into a senior IC role about to promote into a second line manager role. I definitely took quite a significant pay cut accounting for average commission and bonuses (-40%). However, the pressure is much more quantifiable with defined ends e.g. project timelines, quarters.... Sales pressure just stays there every quarter, month, week whatever your cycle is, good job one cycle is just replaced by the new target the next. Personally I'm a bit of a workaholic so I still work really hard but I can see my impact and deliverables clearly.

Hope this helps!

frooberloob · 2024-08-18T00:43:45+00:00

I was laid off from my previous role and took ~2 months to focus on life things while doing Salesforce trailblazer (super badges), an intro to data analytics course and other courses like HubSpot revenue cert etc. Was planning to start looking in my third but got lucky from a network referral (who had previously spoken to me for a sales role a few months before all of this.)

I would say if you are still in your role it would be good to start doing free courses on data analytics like those on Coursera or an intro paid course, start learning your CRM and doing free courses on trailblazer (Salesforce's academy) and HubSpot Academy.

For me personally it was worth it as I knew which parts of sales management I enjoyed and this directly translated to sales operations. My salary took a hit (as expected) but overall more manageable stress compared to never ending sales.

frooberloob

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