Sales Ops / RevOps

RevOps, or Revenue Operations, is the function that coordinates the processes, data and tools used by marketing, sales and customer follow-up teams. Its purpose is to give them a shared understanding of the customer journey and consistent working rules. Sales Ops, or Sales Operations, focuses on sales operations. The two areas overlap, but they are not strictly interchangeable.

The professional structures the sales stages, organises information in the CRM and produces the analyses needed to track opportunities. They also help users apply the agreed rules. In a RevOps role, this work extends beyond sales alone: it also covers information exchanges between the teams involved before and after a contract is signed.

The title alone therefore does not define the role. To establish its scope, specify the activities covered, the teams involved and the decisions the person will be able to make. Also distinguish the person who carries out the analyses from the one who leads improvements. Finance may also be a stakeholder. Specify the reporting line and the decisions that will need to be settled by a manager.

Sales Ops / RevOps, sales leadership and CRM administration: who does what?

• Sales Ops / RevOps organises the processes and data used to monitor activity. It prepares analyses to inform sales decisions.
• Sales leadership oversees decisions on areas such as territories and quotas. Ops provides the data that informs these choices, without automatically being given final authority.
• CRM administration deals with how the system operates. Where sales systems specialists are available, Ops works with them on improvements and automation.

These responsibilities can overlap. Defining who designs a rule, who implements it and who supports users avoids implicitly assigning all these tasks to the same role.

The main challenge is to make sales information usable for decision-making. A dashboard does not fulfil this purpose if teams interpret its metrics differently. Sales Ops / RevOps therefore works on the data, as well as the definitions and rules used to interpret it.

Poorly coordinated processes make handovers between teams more difficult. For a business leader, the risk is discussing results without understanding what the figures actually measure. For teams, it is having to correct information or reconstruct exchanges before they can act. Clarifying the stages of the customer journey and documenting metric formulas provides a shared basis for these discussions.

Fictional example: a company presents reports in which the same opportunity appears at different stages. Before changing the dashboard, ask the professional to examine the classification rules and the data used. Correcting the calculation alone would not resolve conflicting definitions between departments.

Sales forecasts illustrate this dependence. They rely on tracking the pipeline, meaning ongoing opportunities, and on the reliability of the available information. The role can improve these foundations and explain the limits of the analysis. It does not make sales certain and is not solely responsible for the sales team's results.

One poorly defined hiring brief expects data to be put in order, systems to be redesigned and coordination across departments to be established simultaneously, without specifying priorities or the people involved. Another hiring mistake is to select a candidate solely on their knowledge of a software product. To assess their usefulness, also consider the quality of documented rules, the corrections identified and users' adoption of processes.

• Define and document the stages of the sales process so that teams apply shared rules.
• Analyse CRM data quality and organise the corrections needed to monitor sales activity.
• Build reports and dashboards with clearly explained metrics and formulas.
• Inform sales forecasts using the opportunities being tracked and the data available.
• Coordinate data exchanges between marketing, sales and customer follow-up teams within a RevOps remit.
• Define the scope of improvements and automation with the teams responsible for sales systems.
• Support users and monitor their adoption of tools and processes.
• Depending on the role, provide data to support sales territory and quota planning.

Useful knowledge combines an understanding of sales, data analysis and proficiency in sales systems. It includes documenting a process, building reports that can be interpreted and diagnosing CRM data issues. Proficiency in a software product is therefore more useful when accompanied by an understanding of the sales problem it needs to address.

HubSpot Academy offers a Revenue Operations course and learning resources on CRM maturity, reports and data models. Salesforce Trailhead presents the fundamentals of Sales Operations and the associated skills. These resources help develop knowledge. Completing them does not, on its own, demonstrate the ability to lead an improvement within a company.

A background in sales can also be relevant. HubSpot describes Ross Nibur's move from a sales role into operations. This example illustrates one possibility, without establishing it as the predominant route into the role. This transition combines an understanding of sales with knowledge of analysis, processes and sales systems.

Learning a method and applying it operationally remain distinct. Experience provides a context for using knowledge: data to analyse, rules to apply or clarify, and users to support. A certification or job title is therefore not enough to establish the level of autonomy acquired.

The common assessment framework

GetPro prepares the assessment using a grid of prioritised criteria. It distinguishes elements of a candidate's background that can be verified from those to explore further in an interview, and assigns an assessment method to each criterion. The interview uses open questions and concrete examples. Reference checks help complete the assessment of skills by placing the examples in the context of working together.

Recommended applications for Sales Ops / RevOps

The steps below suggest how to apply this framework to the Sales Ops / RevOps role. The criteria and exercise are recommendations to adapt to the responsibilities of the position. They do not describe a protocol specific to this role used by GetPro.

1. Define the criteria before the interview

Distinguish the expected work outcomes: making data reliable, producing an analysis, improving a process or coordinating several teams. For each criterion, specify the level of autonomy required and the people available to work with.

Prepare a shared assessment grid for the assessors. Include, in particular, understanding of the sales process, the quality of reasoning about data and the ability to explain a change. Weight these criteria according to the actual role.

The ability to connect a sales difficulty to a specific piece of information or rule is a positive sign. An answer focused solely on tool names calls for further exploration.

2. Examine a past achievement

Ask the candidate to describe an improvement they contributed to. Have them clarify the initial problem, their personal role, the data examined and the decisions made by other people.

Where possible without exposing sensitive information, examine process documentation or an anonymised report example. Ask how users were involved in the work.

Look for a coherent explanation linking diagnosis, recommendation and implementation. Explore answers that attribute every sales improvement to a single action or fail to distinguish the candidate's work from the team's.

3. Set a diagnostic exercise relevant to the role

Fictional example: provide a pipeline extract with incomplete data and stages whose definitions overlap. Ask the candidate to prepare the questions needed before interpreting the results.

Invite them to choose a priority correction, then specify which users would be affected. Ask them to specify the data needed to build a metric and the limits of the resulting figure.

Observe whether they identify ambiguities before calculating. Give credit to a recommendation proportionate to the problem and a comprehensible formula. A confident forecast based on insufficient data is a warning sign to discuss.

Adapt the exercise to the expected autonomy. For a supervised role, provide the rules to apply. For a role responsible for diagnosis, ask which rules should be clarified and with whom.

4. Assess communication and coordination

Ask the candidate to present their recommendation to someone in sales who is not a specialist. Have them clarify what would change for users and how they would take their objections into account.

Examine how they distinguish between requests, propose priorities and seek a decision from someone with the authority to resolve competing demands. If the role manages a team, also explore how they allocate work and support staff.

An accessible explanation that takes other departments' constraints into account is a positive sign. Answers that neglect tool adoption merit an additional practical scenario.

5. Combine perspectives and references

Involve a sales manager in assessing the candidate's reasoning about sales operations. For CRM and data aspects, seek someone able to examine technical achievements. If this expertise is unavailable, bring in an external specialist.

With the candidate's consent, ask referees to clarify the candidate's actual responsibilities and how the candidate works with users. Compare their answers with the examples presented in the interview.

Reach a conclusion based on the criteria established at the outset. Distinguish demonstrated skills, those requiring support and points that remain to be verified.