The day has finally come for you to post your first job description and hire someone! The budget didn't disappear (this time)! YAY!
But let me guess. You've been so busy as a team of one that you haven't thought out the next steps completely.
And you're worried about managing a team of people with diverse skill sets.
It's normal. Take a deep breath. We've got you. Like anything else in operations, you'll need a roadmap, a plan, a backup plan, and a backup to the backup plan. Here's what you need to know before making that first hire.
During 2024, the RevOps Co-op went on the road and held think tanks with directors and above in RevOps. Everyone has a different opinion about what RevOps should be and do.
This is your department. You get to shape what comes next. It's exciting! It's also a bit scary, especially when hiring people who are smarter and better at things you haven't focused on before.
Don't let fear drive the shape of your department. Look at what the business needs, what it will need even more as it scales, and remember that you're scrappy, intelligent, and gosh darn it, people like you 😉
Look at how we recommend structuring revenue operations and then compare that to your company objectives. You know where your business struggles and the support it needs. Talk to your executive team about where they want the business to go and what they struggle to do.
Oh, and don't get too attached to that plan. If your go-to-market strategy changes, your hiring needs will change.
You'll learn a ton about yourself when you begin managing a team. Past bosses will shape what you do and don't want to project, and your boss will guide you when you need it. You can also consider finding a mentor – the RevOps Co-op Slack community is a great place to start.
Every manager must know what they're good at and not, both from a skillset and a soft skill perspective. From a soft skill standpoint, figure out what kind of personalities you get along well with, who rubs you the wrong way (and why), and what type of communication styles you can and can't adapt to.
Do you enjoy answering questions and helping people grow? Or do questions drive you crazy? What do you NOT have patience for in a coworker? Make a list. Remember it when you're interviewing candidates. Personality and drive to learn matter just as much as what they already know. And as you add more people to your team, you need someone who can welcome new people without spinning out because they feel threatened.
You probably already know which revenue operations aspects you know by heart and which will need to come from a new resource. Maybe you hate enablement, analytics, or systems. Great! You know where you need someone very skilled and able to work independently. And if you need interview question ideas and job description callouts, we've provided links to those articles at the bottom of this page.
The best advice we can give you is to hire realistically. Your company is going to try to provide you with the absolute minimum money required to hire a human. Research what market rates are for the positions you'd like to hire for, and be realistic about the skill level this person needs for the time you have to give them today.
An aspirational hire is a risk to you as a hiring manager on multiple levels. You'll need to fight for them as others question their ability, and you'll need to pour time into them to get them to a place where they have enough business acumen to function on their own. It's better to fight for more money to hire an experienced professional than work with the money you have and fail your new hire because you overestimate the time you have to help them ramp up.
Oh, and meet with HR before you hire someone and ask them for resources like your PTO policy, whether or not your company qualified for FMLA (companies under 50 employees aren't obligated to support this protection in the US), performance review materials, and other resources they think a first-time manager should review before hiring someone.
Especially if you're in a small company, no one will proactively provide these resources to you.
After researching your ideal revenue operations org structure and thinking through who to hire first, it's time to socialize your plan for revenue operations across the broader organization. The charter should cover what your team supports today, what you plan to support in the immediate future, and a roadmap for the organization.
This charter serves multiple purposes:
Listen in as Steve Silver explains how and why to structure a charter.
Departments often advocate hiring resources that report directly to their leadership team. This allows them to keep the resource focused on what they need. For example, we've seen sales hire an enablement professional because they wanted control over the enablement program for the organization. We've also seen finance rush to hire analysts to support the go-to-market teams because they wanted to own what was being reported to the organization.
These aren't bad reasons for other departments to hire their own resources. But it illustrates why you need to build a strong case to centralize those resources in revenue operations and repeatedly talk about your intent to do so.
We are big fans of S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound) goals.
Some goals will be measurable in the traditional sense, and some will be binary – they will reach them or not. For example, before you can measure enablement's impact on sales efficiency, you must be able to measure sales efficiency. Giving your system admin and analyst goals to build the infrastructure needed to measure key performance indicators within a given time frame is a great starting point for a set of goals.
Your job will be to keep your team focused on your primary objectives. This will be extremely difficult. As you know, RevOps professionals don't have just one "boss," and some people are compelling when they want something done. Drawing up goals for the year and adjusting them quarterly will keep your team operating efficiently and effectively.
You'll also need to provide your team members with what they need to change or improve in order to grow. Ideally, you've already been planning for their growth with HR in terms of titles and raises. Sometimes, you'll need to help them move into a role that fits their personality better. Goals and annual reviews are your opportunity to help your direct reports understand where their strengths lie and what they need to do differently.
Goals are also highly critical to establish early and come in handy if an employee falls off the rails. No one anticipates hiring someone who has performance issues. You wouldn't have hired them if you thought they would become a problem! And even if your new hire has a gung-ho attitude, giving them goals and a roadmap will keep them far more focused than pointing them in a general direction and telling them, "Go!"
It is critical to build a safe space for your team to vent one-on-one, come to you with what they're struggling with, and be honest about what doesn't come naturally to them. It's also important to keep boundaries professional, and this means knowing what you can and should ask about and which information you should keep to yourself.
Sometimes we learn these things the hard way – but we rarely HAVE to. A mentor can cut down significantly on trial and error. Find someone honest about what they've seen and done so you can openly discuss what you need to know. In our experience, this works better if the mentor is someone outside of your current company.
Always prioritize your one-on-one meetings with direct reports. Canceling sends a terrible message.
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Build a meeting cadence. Some team members will naturally work together well and communicate. Others will feel their job has nothing to do with the other team member's responsibilities. Weekly meetings can be short, but they should be an opportunity to update the team on where your go-to-market team is compared to their goals, how the company strategy is evolving, and what your team should be working on as a priority.
Running through a list of tasks and overarching projects a week with small teams isn't time-consuming. Shorten weekly meetings as teams grow and have your more technical resources meet daily for a status update and weekly for workload deep dives.
It's also important to understand team dynamics. When you hire a new person, you're disrupting your team. Check out this article on team dynamics so you know what to expect.
Finally, making opportunities for your team members to bond is important. If team meetings and meals aren't reasonable, try online activities. A lot of great team activities are just a Google search away.
If you need interview questions, skill requirements, and job description ideas for a role, here are some articles organized by role type:
For ideas on how to create goals and measure impact, try these resources:
Miscellaneous resources:
