The LeanScale Podcast · Episode 16

A Day in the Life of a RevOps VP

Anthony Enrico and Bernardo Alves on what a VP of RevOps actually does — strategy over firefighting, owning the operating plan, and the cadence from annual to daily

Bernardo Alves · Engagement Manager, LeanScale · LeanScale Hosted by Anthony Enrico
Published Updated 00:19:19 16 min read 3,228 words
Revenue Operations GTM Strategy Sales Leadership Forecasting
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Executive Summary

The one-paragraph brief, extended

Why this conversation matters — and who should spend the hour.

This early LeanScale Podcast episode is a two-operator clinic on a role that, in 2023, most people were filling for the first time: the VP of Revenue Operations. Co-founder Anthony Enrico and LeanScale engagement manager Bernardo Alves define what the job actually becomes once a company is large enough — roughly mid-to-late Series B or early Series C — to staff a full RevOps team with dedicated people for systems, enablement, and functional PMs. The through-line: at the VP level the work is strategic, not tactical, and the operators who don't internalize that get stuck as ticket-takers.

The core argument is that RevOps is the only seat with a legitimate, unbiased, cross-functional view of the entire revenue engine. Every other leader carries a functional bias; the VP of RevOps is the 'glue' — or, in Anthony's metaphor, the conductor who plays no single instrument but keeps the whole ensemble in tune. That vantage point makes the VP the natural owner of the annual go-to-market operating plan, which Bernardo calls the single most important thing the role produces and the 'ops Super Bowl' of the year. The failure mode is predictable: because RevOps usually grows out of sales ops and reports to a CRO, it inherits a 'you're here to support us' bias that keeps it firefighting instead of driving strategy.

The back half is a practical calendar for the role, zoomed from annual to daily. Annually: lead planning, goal-setting, and capacity planning. Monthly: run board-meeting dry runs internally so the real board meeting is never a surprise, and track performance against plan and forecast. Weekly: hold standing 1:1s with the heads of sales, marketing, CS, and partnerships, and sit in their team meetings to keep a finger on the pulse — if less than half your time is spent collaborating with other leaders, the mix is wrong. Daily: a 'morning coffee dashboard' ritual — check yesterday's wins, concerns, and data inconsistencies the way you'd watch the stock market. The payoff is trust: if you find the data problem before anyone else does, you become the person people want in the room.

Just as important is what to stop doing — firefighting, building reports and dashboards yourself, being the first-call fixer. Delegate that to an empowered team; only touch data when there's a real analytical (not reporting) reason. The litmus test is blunt: if you're not leading annual planning and sitting in the board room, you're operating at a director level, not a VP. For operators not yet staffed to be strategic, the build order is clear — hire a systems admin first, then a reporting person, to buy back the bandwidth. Who should listen: first-time VPs of RevOps, RevOps managers and directors trying to earn the seat, and founders and CROs deciding what to actually expect from the function.

Key Takeaways

11 things worth stealing

The load-bearing ideas, each with the business implication and who should care.

01

At the VP level, RevOps is strategic — not tactical

Once you run a full RevOps team, the job stops being systems and reporting and becomes driving strategy, influence, and cross-functional alignment. The one word Bernardo lands on is 'strategic': a VP should be in key business decisions, not firefighting small matters.

Why it matters: Audit your calendar against your title. If most of your time is production work, you're operating a level below where you sit — reallocate toward planning, alignment, and decision-making.

RevOps LeadersRevenue Executives
02

RevOps is the only unbiased, cross-functional seat — be the glue

Every functional leader optimizes for their own team; the VP of RevOps is intrinsically cross-functional and can tie sales, marketing, CS, partnerships, finance, and product into one concise strategy. Anthony's metaphor: a conductor who plays no instrument but keeps the ensemble aligned.

Why it matters: Leverage the neutral vantage point deliberately — convene the functions, own the singular view of the business, and drive influence rather than waiting to be told what to build.

RevOps LeadersSales LeadersRevenue Executives
03

Your #1 deliverable is the annual go-to-market operating plan

The most important thing a VP of RevOps produces is a sound operating plan — built on data and sensible assumptions — plus the discipline to monitor it through the quarter and year. Bernardo calls annual planning the 'ops Super Bowl.'

Why it matters: Treat the operating plan as the spine of the role. Most VPs under-invest here because it doesn't feel like 'producing' — that's exactly the trap.

RevOps LeadersFoundersRevenue Executives
04

The sales-bias trap keeps RevOps out of strategy

RevOps usually evolves out of sales ops and reports to a VP of Sales or CRO, inheriting a 'you exist to support our team' bias. That structure can make operators feel unempowered to work on bigger strategic processes — but that's exactly where they need to be.

Why it matters: Recognize the reporting-line gravity and fight upstream to earn strategic scope. Where RevOps should ultimately report is its own question worth resolving.

RevOps LeadersFounders
05

Great RevOps leaders toggle between tactical and strategic

You can't fully escape tactical action items — your team needs daily support — but the defining skill is stepping in to get tactical for a specific outcome, then zooming back out to strategy and prioritizing the big-picture work.

Why it matters: Build the muscle to move fluidly between altitudes, defaulting to the strategic. Prioritizing the big picture is what positions the whole team to succeed.

RevOps Leaders
06

Stop firefighting and building reports yourself — delegate

The easiest trap is becoming the first call when sales or marketing has an emergency, or personally constructing reports and dashboards. An empowered team should handle fire drills and reporting; the VP should only touch data for a genuine analytical reason.

Why it matters: If you're touching data, have a business decision behind it — 'looking for insights, not constructing the report.' Otherwise hand it to your team and protect your strategic time.

RevOps Leaders
07

If you're not leading annual planning and in the board room, you're a director

A real VP of RevOps leads (not just participates in) the annual planning process and is in the board room — nobody is better positioned to speak to the go-to-market data and why the results came to be.

Why it matters: Use board and planning access as the benchmark for the role. If you don't have it, find ways to get involved; the business likely needs you there.

RevOps LeadersRevenue Executives
08

Run the operating cadence from annual to daily

Annual planning and capacity planning; monthly tracking against plan and forecast plus internal board dry runs; weekly 1:1s with every functional leader plus their team meetings; a daily 'morning coffee dashboard' to catch wins, concerns, and data issues.

Why it matters: Institutionalize the rhythm. Weekly pulse and monthly synthesis are what make the board-level story possible; without the cadence, the board meeting becomes a scramble.

RevOps LeadersSales Leaders
09

Spend more than half your time collaborating, not in spreadsheets

The role is not solitary spreadsheet work. Bernardo's heuristic: if less than half your time is spent collaborating with other leaders, you have the wrong mix. Scope also stretches beyond sales, marketing, and CS into finance and product.

Why it matters: Measure your collaboration ratio. The linchpin role only works if you're actually meeting the people who drive the revenue engine on a regular cadence.

RevOps Leaders
10

Find the data problem first — that's how you build trust

The daily data ritual isn't just for your own understanding; getting ahead of the data and surfacing gaps before anyone else notices builds trust. As Bernardo puts it, if you don't find it first, you lost.

Why it matters: Make proactive problem-finding a habit. Being the person who spots issues first is what turns a RevOps leader into a trusted partner people want to work with.

RevOps LeadersRevenue Executives
11

Not staffed yet? Hire a systems admin first, then a reporting person

For operators not yet at the full-team stage, the path to staying strategic is a deliberate build order: first a systems admin, then a reporting person, to unlock the bandwidth to focus on strategic matters.

Why it matters: Sequence your first hires to buy back time. You earn the strategic seat by offloading systems and reporting execution, not by trying to do it all yourself.

RevOps LeadersFounders
Frameworks Discussed

6 named models

Every framework Jimmy names, defined and time-stamped.

The Strategic–Tactical Toggle

00:00

The defining skill of a great RevOps leader: stepping in to get tactical for a specific business outcome when needed, then expanding back out to the overall strategy — while prioritizing the big-picture work.

You can't fully escape tactical action items, and your team will need daily support, but the operators who succeed default to strategy and use tactical dives surgically rather than living in them.

RevOps as the Conductor (the Glue)

05:11

The VP of RevOps is the cross-functional glue — a conductor who plays no single instrument but keeps sales, marketing, CS, partnerships, finance, and product aligned and producing one coherent strategy.

Because every other leader carries a functional bias, only RevOps has the unbiased vantage point to aggregate all functions into a singular view of the business and drive influence across them.

The Annual Operating Plan (the Ops Super Bowl)

10:36

The VP of RevOps' single most important deliverable: a data-driven go-to-market operating plan — goals, assumptions, capacity planning — that is then monitored against actuals through the quarter and year.

Annual planning is where RevOps adds the most value. Most VPs under-prioritize it because it doesn't feel like production work, but a sound plan you can monitor is the spine of the role.

The RevOps Operating Cadence (Annual → Daily)

12:36

A nested rhythm: annual planning; monthly plan/forecast tracking and internal board dry runs; weekly 1:1s with every functional leader; and a daily 'morning coffee dashboard.'

Each layer feeds the next — daily pulse enables weekly context, which enables monthly synthesis, which makes the board-level story credible instead of a last-minute scramble.

The Morning Coffee Dashboard

16:04

A daily habit of reviewing a focused dashboard first thing — yesterday's big wins, concerns, and data inconsistencies — the way you'd watch the stock market.

It builds the VP's own understanding of the business and, by surfacing gaps before anyone else notices, builds trust across the team. LeanScale builds this dashboard for its customers.

The VP-vs-Director Test

11:52

A blunt litmus test for the role: if you are not leading (not merely attending) the annual planning process and not in the board room, you're operating at a director level, not VP.

Board and planning access is the marker of true VP scope. Lacking it is a prompt to fight upstream for involvement — it benefits your career and the business needs you there.

Best Quotes

14 lines worth clipping

Pulled verbatim. Copy or share any of them.

“A key characteristic of a great RevOps leader is being able to step between those two roles and get tactical when needed in order to provide a specific outcome to a business problem, but also be able to expand and look at the overall strategy and help guide the company on where to go as a whole.”
Bernardo Alves 00:00
“The big word that comes to mind is strategic. You are a VP after all, and you should be involved in key business decisions.”
Bernardo Alves 01:56
“You're a bit of the glue as the VP of RevOps. You're the one intermingling with all those departments to come up with a singular, concise strategy.”
Bernardo Alves 02:34
“RevOps oftentimes evolves as an extension of sales ops, so there's an inherent sales bias, and it lives directly under a VP of Sales or CRO that has a bias of, 'Hey, you're a function of our team — you're here to support us.'”
Bernardo Alves 03:54
“You really need to be the person who sits between all those functions and guides them. A good metaphor might be like a conductor: you may not be playing a specific instrument, but you're making sure the entire ensemble is aligned and producing music.”
Anthony Enrico 05:11
“If you're sitting in a VP seat, you will be valued more on the decisions you make and the ideas that you create than the actual production of those ideas.”
Anthony Enrico 07:46
“The easiest one to get caught in is firefighting. If your VP of Sales or VP of Marketing has an immediate need, you'll probably be the first person they call — delegate that. You should not be caught in those shoes.”
Bernardo Alves 09:14
“The key area of focus, and kind of the ops Super Bowl, is going to revolve around annual planning. That's where you're going to be able to add the most value.”
Bernardo Alves 10:36
“If you are not part of the annual planning process — and not just part of, but leading — and you're not in the board room, you're not a VP of RevOps.”
Anthony Enrico 11:52
“It's not going to be a role where you're in a spreadsheet working on individual work. If less than half your time is spent collaborating with other leaders in the business, you've probably got the wrong mix.”
Bernardo Alves 12:36
“As a VP of RevOps, you should absolutely be having a one-on-one with the head of sales, the head of marketing, the head of CS. That weekly cadence of keeping your finger on the pulse is unbelievably important.”
Anthony Enrico 13:52
“Every morning when you wake up, grab your coffee and take a look at the morning coffee dashboard. See what happened yesterday — any big wins, any big concerns, any data inconsistencies — and keep a daily finger on the pulse as if you're watching the stock market.”
Anthony Enrico 16:23
“If you don't find it first, then you lost.”
Bernardo Alves 17:45
“If you're not quite there yet in terms of having that team, you're probably going to want to first invest in a systems admin, probably followed by a reporting person, to unlock your bandwidth to focus on these strategic matters.”
Bernardo Alves 18:36
Practical Advice

What should you actually do?

The playbook, split by the seat you sit in.

RevOps Leaders

  • Audit your calendar against your title: if most of your time is production work (reports, dashboards, fire drills), you're operating a level below VP — reallocate toward planning, alignment, and decisions.
  • Own the annual go-to-market operating plan end to end, build it on data and defensible assumptions, and monitor it against actuals every quarter.
  • Institutionalize the cadence: annual planning, monthly internal board dry runs and plan tracking, weekly 1:1s with sales/marketing/CS/partnerships, and a daily morning-coffee dashboard.
  • Delegate firefighting and reporting to an empowered team; only touch data when a business decision depends on it — look for insights, not report-building.
  • Get ahead of the data so you surface problems first — that's how you earn trust and a seat at the table.

Revenue Executives

  • Pull your VP of RevOps into annual planning as a leader and into the board room; nobody is better positioned to explain the go-to-market data and results.
  • Resist using RevOps as a support desk for your team — the sales-bias reporting line is what keeps the function from driving strategy.

Founders

  • Expect a full RevOps team (systems, enablement, functional PMs) around mid-to-late Series B / early Series C, and expect the VP to own the operating plan.
  • If you're not there yet, sequence hires to unlock strategic bandwidth: a systems admin first, then a reporting person.
Operations Takeaways

By function

The same conversation, filtered for RevOps, pipeline/marketing ops, and customer ops.

Revenue Operations

  • Operate strategically. At the VP level the mandate is strategy, influence, and alignment — not firefighting, reporting, or systems work.
  • Own the operating plan. The annual go-to-market operating plan is the role's #1 deliverable; monitor it against actuals all year.
  • Be the glue. Use the unbiased, cross-functional seat to aggregate every function into one view of the business — conductor, not instrumentalist.
  • Delegate the tactical. Empower a team to handle fire drills and reporting; only touch data for a real analytical reason.
  • Run the cadence. Annual planning, monthly board dry runs and plan tracking, weekly functional 1:1s, and a daily data ritual.
  • Earn trust by finding problems first. Surface data gaps before anyone else notices — 'if you don't find it first, you lost.'
Metrics Mentioned

The numbers, with context

Mid-to-late Series B / early Series C
Company stage for a full RevOps team

The profile where a VP of RevOps has a built-out team (systems, enablement, functional PMs) and can focus on strategic matters.

> 50% of time
Collaboration time threshold

Bernardo's heuristic: if less than half your time is spent collaborating with other leaders, you've got the wrong mix — the role isn't solitary spreadsheet work.

Systems admin → reporting person
First-hire build order

For operators not yet staffed to be strategic, the sequence that unlocks bandwidth to focus on strategy.

Monthly dry runs
Board-prep cadence

Run an internal board-style review every month so the real board meeting is never a scramble.

Sales, Marketing, CS, Partnerships
Weekly 1:1 cadence

The bare-minimum standing 1:1s a VP of RevOps should hold to keep a finger on the pulse of the business.

Entities

Companies, people & tools mentioned

Auto-extracted and linked into the knowledge graph.

Companies

LeanScaleGTM Operations

The fractional RevOps firm behind the podcast; Bernardo Alves is an engagement manager and Anthony Enrico a co-founder. Anthony notes LeanScale builds the 'morning coffee dashboard' for its customers.

00:27 · 16:04Company →

People

Bernardo Alvesguest

Engagement manager at LeanScale; came up through customer success into operations and business intelligence, focused on attribution and usage-based tracking.

Engagement Manager, LeanScaleProfile →
Anthony Enricohost

Co-founder of LeanScale and host of The LeanScale Podcast.

Co-FounderProfile →

Tools & software

Related LeanScale Services

Where this shows up in the work

Fractional RevOps

Embedded, field-facing RevOps leadership and execution — the operator model Jimmy describes, delivered as a service.

The episode is a definition of the field-facing, strategic RevOps operator — exactly the leadership LeanScale embeds.

Forecasting & ARR Definition

Define a raise-worthy ARR and build a reliable consumption forecast across finance, data science, and go-to-market.

Owning the annual operating plan and tracking performance to plan and forecast is core LeanScale work.

Sales Enablement Build

Stand up a zero-based, sales-academy enablement motion sized to your span of control and sales complexity.

Enablement is named as one of the dedicated functions inside the full RevOps team the VP orchestrates.

Frequently Asked Questions

Straight answers

Generated from the conversation, marked up for search and AI extraction.

What does a VP of Revenue Operations actually do?

At the VP level, RevOps is a strategic role, not a tactical one. The VP owns the annual go-to-market operating plan, aligns sales, marketing, customer success, partnerships, finance, and product into one strategy, participates in board meetings, and monitors performance against plan — while delegating firefighting, reporting, and systems work to their team.

When does a company need a full VP of RevOps with a dedicated team?

Typically around mid-to-late Series B or early Series C, when the company can staff a full RevOps team with dedicated people for systems and enablement plus functional PMs. Before that, an operator usually starts by managing systems and grows into the role as the team is built out.

What is the most important responsibility of a VP of RevOps?

Building and owning the annual go-to-market operating plan — a data-driven plan of goals, assumptions, and capacity — and monitoring it against actuals through the year. It's the single highest-leverage thing the role produces; many VPs under-prioritize it because it doesn't feel like 'production.'

What should a VP of RevOps NOT be doing?

Firefighting emergencies, personally building reports and dashboards, and being the first-call fixer for other leaders. Those should be delegated to an empowered team. A VP should only touch data when there's a real analytical reason tied to a business decision — looking for insights, not constructing the report.

What does a VP of RevOps' schedule look like across the year?

Annually, lead planning, goal-setting, and capacity planning. Monthly, run internal board-meeting dry runs and track performance against plan and forecast. Weekly, hold 1:1s with the heads of sales, marketing, CS, and partnerships and sit in their team meetings. Daily, review a focused 'morning coffee dashboard' of wins, concerns, and data issues.

How is a VP of RevOps different from a RevOps director?

The dividing line is strategic scope: a true VP leads the annual planning process and is in the board room, not just supporting them. If you're not leading annual planning and you're not in the boardroom, you're operating at a director level — and the fix is to find ways to get more involved in both.

How does a RevOps leader build trust with the go-to-market team?

By getting ahead of the data. A daily habit of reviewing key metrics lets you identify gaps and concerns before anyone else notices them. Being the person who finds and raises the problem first — rather than being told about it — is what makes leaders want you in the room.

Timeline

Jump through the conversation

Click any chapter to open it in the transcript.

00:00The strategic–tactical toggle (cold open) 00:38Who this is for: a VP with a full RevOps team 01:56The one word that matters: strategic 02:34RevOps as the cross-functional glue 03:15Owning the go-to-market operating plan 03:54Why RevOps under-prioritizes strategy: the sales-bias trap 05:11The conductor metaphor 08:34What NOT to do: firefighting and building reports 10:36The annual plan: the ops Super Bowl, and the board room 11:52If you're not in annual planning or the board room, you're not a VP 12:36The monthly view: tracking to plan 13:52The weekly cadence: 1:1s with every functional leader 16:04The morning coffee dashboard: a daily data ritual 17:23Finding problems first builds trust 18:36Recap and scaling into the role
Full Transcript

The whole conversation

Broken into chapters, searchable, verbatim from the audio. Speakers inferred (not diarized).

Transcript as markdown ↓ Whole episode as markdown ↓
00:00The strategic–tactical toggle (cold open)

0:00 A key characteristic of a great RevOps leader is being able to step between those two roles and get tactical when needed in order to provide a specific outcome to a business problem but also be able to expand and look at the overall strategy and help guide the company on where to go as a whole.

0:27 Welcome to The LeanScale Podcast where we talk about everything RevOps. Thank you for listening.

00:38Who this is for: a VP with a full RevOps team

0:38 Since revenue operations is such a new function, I think a lot of VPs or RevOps are finding themselves in the role for the first time and I think it's difficult for them to understand exactly what they should be doing or exactly what they're responsible for. So I'm happy to go into this with you, Bernardo. I think it's going to be a good topic. I think there's a lot of new VPs of RevOps out there that will benefit from this conversation and I hope we give them a few tips that are helpful. Yeah, absolutely. Let's get right into it. So first I want to frame who we're talking about. So sometimes you may end up in the role,

1:14 if you're an early stage startup, you end up managing some systems, then you end up being a manager of RevOps. What I really want to talk about is a VP of RevOps that has a full-blown RevOps team. You have somebody dedicated for systems, enablement. You may have PMs for the functions and I want to talk about what that VP should be focused on. Yeah, absolutely. So if you don't meet those criteria, don't worry. We'll talk a little bit about how you can ease your way into it as you're building a team. But if you're in that mid to late Series B, early Series C profile where you have a built-out team and you can focus on these matters,

01:56The one word that matters: strategic

1:56 think the big word that comes to mind is strategic, right? You are a VP after all and you should be involved in key business decisions. So being able to focus your time less so on firefighting, on small matters, you should be the one driving strategy, driving influence, and you should be using your time and your privileged position as an intrinsically cross-functional role to kind of tie it all together and help everyone get to where they need, right? Every other leader in the go-to-market life cycle is typically going to have their bias in terms of

02:34RevOps as the cross-functional glue

2:34 how can I best serve my function, support my team. You're a bit of a glue as the VP of RevOps, right? You're the one intermingling with all those departments to come up with a singular concise strategy. Leverage that. You should be the one driving the influence. So one of the big things that we like to focus on is your go-to-market plan, right? You should be at the forefront of the company planning process, working with all those cross-departmental functions, international teams. If your team, if your company has those functions, you'll be the central point to aggregate all that information and help everyone come together to create a singular

03:15Owning the go-to-market operating plan

3:15 view of the business. And I think that takes a lot of work. I think a lot of people underestimate what it takes to put together an overall operating plan, especially for the go-to-market portion of it. And if you are a VP of RevOps, I think that's the most important thing that you focus on, making sure you have a sound operating plan built on data, built on assumptions that make sense, and you're able to monitor that plan as you go through the year, go through the quarter. And a lot of VPs of RevOps just don't... I think they think they don't have time to focus on it or

03:54Why RevOps under-prioritizes strategy: the sales-bias trap

3:54 they don't prioritize it. And why do you think that is? I think part of it is simply due to the structure of where RevOps tends to report into, right? RevOps oftentimes evolves as an extension of sales ops. So there's an inherent sales bias and it lives directly under a VP of sales or CRO role that has a certain bias of, "Hey, you are a function of our team. You're here to support our team." And that can lead to a bias in which you don't feel empowered to work on these bigger strategic processes. But that's really where you need to be focusing your time, right? I think we

4:35 will talk about in a different podcast about where RevOps should fit, but being able to have that unbiased perspective is critical to the success of the function, right? Like I mentioned earlier, nobody else is going to have the privilege of being able to work with all of those departments with a singular goal of how do we succeed as a business at the VP level more than RevOps. So being able to leverage that is super important. Yeah, I agree. And I think spending time with the functional leaders is really important. Monitoring the plan and then providing insights

05:11The conductor metaphor

5:11 to functional leaders when things look like they're not going well, or it looks like there might be more opportunity to capture that we're not focused on or not investing enough in. You really need to be the person who sits between all those functions and guides them. I think a good metaphor might be like a conductor. You may not be playing a specific instrument, but you're making sure the entire ensemble is aligned and producing music. So I think that's something that a lot of VPs or RevOps maybe don't recognize that that's their role or recognize the importance of investing

5:49 their time there, because sometimes it may feel like it's not as productive as building something in the systems or creating a report or creating a dashboard. It may feel like you're not producing when a lot of VPs or RevOps come from a production type of role, but you really have to step into that alignment role and strategy role. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think a lot of it is also going to be dealing with what the initial constraints of the business are. I think you hit it right on the head that a lot of ops roles stem from a need, especially a production need, right? I think the

6:25 organic flow and how ops develops in most companies is we have a problem. We need somebody to support it, and then you kind of become beholden to those obligations rather than coming in initially as a strategic driving function of growth. And oftentimes you have to fight upstream a little bit in order to earn your wings and be able to feel like you can come into those conversations and bring that value to the team. But that's where you're going to be most successful. The less amount of time that you can spend firefighting, working on individual reporting, and instead focusing on

7:06 bringing the analytics of what your team should be providing and adding those business insights to come up with a strategy for the business on what bets you should be making in, where are the deficiencies that you can address, bottleneck analysis, things like that will immediately start adding a lot more value into the function and the business as a whole. And it's something that's desperately needed, especially as we gear more and more towards a how do we grow efficiently and sustainably world rather than a growth at all costs world, ops as input, and that will become

7:46 more and more relevant over time. It will. And in particular, if you're sitting in a VPC, you will be valued more on the decisions you make and the ideas that you create than the actual production of those ideas. Yeah, no, absolutely. And you're going to have to come into tactical action items here and there. You're not going to be able to get away from it. Your team will need that daily support from you as well. But the key characteristic of a great RevOps leader is being able to step between those two roles and get tactical when needed in order to provide a specific outcome to a business problem, but also be able to expand and look

08:34What NOT to do: firefighting and building reports

8:34 at the overall strategy and help guide the company on where to go as a whole. If you can manage your day and navigate between those two, prioritizing that latter function of the big picture thinking, you're going to be in a much better position to help your team succeed. So we've talked about some of the things a VP of ops should be doing. Sometimes it's easier to frame it the opposite way. What should you not be doing? Yeah, absolutely. I think the easiest one to get caught in is firefighting, dealing with emergencies, kind of like if your VP of sales or

9:14 your VP of marketing have an immediate need, you'll probably be the first person that they'll call, delegate that. You should have a team that's empowered and able to make anything happen, be it from a reporting perspective, from an immediate fixing and error perspective in terms of a fire drill like that. You should not be caught in those shoes, especially on the reporting analytics. If you're going to be touching data, you better be coming up with a pretty good analytical reason for it, more so than a reporting reason for it. Looking for insights, not

9:49 constructing the report itself. Absolutely. Yeah, it should be for a purpose of, will this data help me answer a business decision or make a bet that will pay off in the future? The answer is no, you probably shouldn't be looking at that data. Give it to somebody else on your team. So another practical way to look at this, I think at the end of the day, everybody has same amount of hours, same amount of days in a week, weeks in a year. What would a schedule look like for a VP of RevOps? So maybe starting annually and then like quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily. What would a typical calendar look like for a VP of RevOps?

10:36The annual plan: the ops Super Bowl, and the board room

10:36 Yeah, absolutely. I think the key area of focus and kind of the ops Super Bowl is going to revolve around annual planning, right? That's where you're going to be able to add the most value, helping set goals, expectations, and the overall business decision for the year is going to be really the core thing that you're going to look at. And that involves anything from goal setting, setting up an operating plan, capacity planning to help support all your business functions in sales, marketing, et cetera. You'll be very involved in all of their process, or at least you should be,

11:16 so that you can have that holistic perspective and help the business succeed as a business, rather than individual departments. Expanding onto that, you're probably going to get a lot of mileage when it comes to board meetings time. You should be an active participant in the board meeting, not only in the term of getting prep done for it, but I think a great VP of RevOps should be in that room. Nobody's going to be better poised and positioned to talk about that data. Then you hopefully help compile a lot of it and help set the foundations as to why those decisions

11:52If you're not in annual planning or the board room, you're not a VP

11:52 and why those results came to be in the first place. So board meeting prep will be a big one. And then in terms of, I want to pause there. I think if you are not part of the annual planning process and not just part of, but leading, and you're not in the board room, you're not a VP of RevOps. Yeah, you're probably just at a director level and I would challenge you. Hey, find ways to get more involved in there because it won't only benefit you and help your career growth. The business probably needs you. Absolutely. So that's a really good, some big annual quarterly milestones. What does a month look like in the life of a VP of RevOps?

12:36The monthly view: tracking to plan

12:36 You're probably going to do a lot of tracking against plan, tracking against forecasts, making sure that you have an explanation alongside the VP of Sales Marketing CS as to what's going on around the business so that you can make any adjustments at those quarterly marks. So having a really strong pulse of what's going on, what are the changes, what are the investments that you're making. And then overall, if there's any tax tech decisions, anything like that in terms of process that will bring organizational change management, for lack of a better term, you should probably be involved in that from an enablement perspective as well,

13:11 help and drive that decision. But really, I think at the core of it, you're probably going to be spending a lot more time meeting with other stakeholders than you expect. It's not going to be a role where you're in a spreadsheet working on individual work. If less than half your time is spent collaborating with other leaders in the business, you've probably got the wrong mix there. Yeah, I'm with you. I think a typical week, you should, as a VP of RevOps, you should absolutely be having a one-on-one with the head of sales, one-on-one with the head of marketing, one-on-one

13:52The weekly cadence: 1:1s with every functional leader

13:52 with the head of CS. If you have a partnership or channel strategy, a one-on-one with the head of partnerships or channel, you should also be integrated into their weekly team meetings as well so that you have a really good finger on the pulse of how the team is doing, how the leaders are doing, the sentiment of the teams, the sentiment of leadership, what's working, what's not working. That weekly cadence of really keeping your finger on the pulse is unbelievably important. And since you're going to be in that board room and you're likely leading the go-to-market portion

14:28 of the board deck and helping to craft the story of what's going on and explaining, you should be doing that on a monthly basis too. Absolutely. Pretend you have a board meeting every month and be prepared for it. And do it internally. Do it with your executive team. And you tell the executive team how things are going. So that way, you have a bit more time to prepare for when... I think it's a big show when you go to the board meeting. You have a lot of information that is still in a really short period of time. And if you're not in this rhythm of keeping your

15:02 finger on the pulse on a weekly basis, putting things together on a monthly basis as an understanding of what's happening with the business, it's going to be really tough to do it at the board level. Absolutely. The last thing that you want is to get into a board room where you don't have the answers or you're not predicting the questions that they're going to be asked. And you need to know how the business is doing, how your data is doing in order to get ahead of those questions. And I think it's also worth mentioning. All those meetings that you called out,

15:32 those are probably the bare minimum here, right? A lot of ops functions are going to be broader in scope. At the very least, you'll be servicing and helping the marketing CS and sales front. But a lot of time you're going to be taking on some finance work as well, some product work as well. So you're really going to be meeting with everyone that's helping drive that revenue engine in some way, shape, or form. It's probably worth meeting with them on a regular basis and helping align and have a clear understanding of what's coming down the pipeline and

16:04The morning coffee dashboard: a daily data ritual

16:04 where do we want to be, you know, three, six, nine, 12 months from now. Yeah, you really have to play that linchpin or cornerstone role of the team and people are going to depend on you to be that glue. So another thing I think is important if you're a VP of RevOps, I would get in the habit of every morning taking a look at the data that you need to look at. We build this type of dashboard for our customers and I have my own that I use, but we call it the morning coffee dashboard. So every morning when you wake up, grab your coffee, take a look at the morning coffee dashboard, see what

16:46 happened yesterday. Any big wins, any big concerns, any data inconsistencies, keep a daily finger on the pulse as if you're watching the stock market or something like that. Really have a tight understanding of what's going on on a daily basis so that way you have a good rhythm to put together that weekly and monthly reporting and you have your finger on the pulse when you're having one-on-ones with the other functional leaders too. And it not only builds your own internal understanding of the data, but I think one of the key words here that I want to use to describe this is it builds trust

17:23Finding problems first builds trust

17:23 for the team, right? No one wants to be the person telling you that there's a problem in the data, that's what they expect you to bring to them as the VP of Ops. If you're the one who's always getting ahead of the data, knowing where it's at, identifying gaps before they become a problem that somebody else notices, people are going to appreciate working with you. Absolutely. If you don't find it first, then you lost. So let's just recap. If you find yourself in a VP of RevOps role, remember you have to stay strategic, get out of firefighting, find ways to delegate things to

17:58 your team, build out the team as you scale so that you're able to stay strategic, and focus on alignment. Your biggest responsibility is the annual operating plan. So making sure the go-to-market portion of that plan is functioning well, monitoring performance to plan, and having the insight to understand if you're not hitting the plan or if you're leaving opportunities on the table. And from a schedule perspective, make sure you're meeting with functional leaders at least weekly. As you mentioned, it's the bare minimum. Doing board meeting dry runs on a monthly basis,

18:36Recap and scaling into the role

18:36 be in the boardroom, and every year be part of, if not leading, that annual planning process. Absolutely. And if you're not quite there yet, in terms of having that team, focusing on making sure that you're positioning yourself to be able to scale, you're probably going to want to first invest in a systems admin, probably followed by a reporting person to unlock your bandwidth to focus on these strategic matters. Absolutely. Bernardo, thank you so much for going through it. Thank you for listening to this episode. If you liked the discussion, please like, share, and subscribe to wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss a new episode.

19:19 you