Like many others in the revops world, Stacie Sussman started out in sales before she became an operations guru. As CRO of RevUp Advisory, she and her team of revops “ninjas” have helped over 100 companies turn revenue plateaus into peaks through proactive and sustainable operational transformation.

Stacie sat down with us to share some of her agency’s top revops philosophies including the North Star Roadmap and the Conveyer Belt Methodology, plus her thoughts on common revops mistakes.

Follow her on LinkedIn if you’re interested in understanding the bigger GTM picture outside of your silo!

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You have a background in sales before moving into revenue operations. Could you tell me a little about your transition into the revops field?

I ran sales teams and was a seller for almost two decades. I moved into consulting and was basically doing sales for more SMBs, mid-market founders, business owners, and I realized that with the earlier stage smaller companies, even if I could implement sales processes and methodology, things would still fall flat if we don't have real systems in place. 

And so I ended up being sort of a head of sales, but then I'd be asking, “what are our sales stages?” “Are we putting deals in a CRM?” “What does that look like?” And for some clients, this was foreign to them! That piqued my interest because I saw there was a gap in the market. And I was just saw how you can do all this great stuff with sales and bring in all this revenue, but if you don't have a pulse on your forecasting and where you're going monthly, quarterly, annually, it's really hard talk to investors or other stakeholders.

Now we're building an agency here at RevUp Advisory to help advise companies. I have a team of folks now and we can influence the sales methodology, lead qualification, and criteria, and then we get into scoring, funnel stages, piecing everything together to be systematized from a philosophy and a strategy into infrastructure.

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What are some common misconceptions you still come across when regarding revops?

I don't think people honestly understand the concept of revenue operations. I think in the B2B SaaS world, there’s some awareness, but outside the industry, people just don't get it.

Sometimes I use just the word operations, or commercial operations, because I think that falls across sales and marketing and customer success where revenue operations actually lies. But the concept is so unknown, I have to use vernacular and language that they understand at the end of the day.

For a small subset of us, it's such a crucial linchpin to growing an organization. But there's a whole world of other industries and companies that it's still just a foreign concept!

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What’s a common misconception you think people have about revops?

I think the market is not yet fully educated on what revenue operations is. Many companies think they’re incorporating revenue operations when in reality it’s just sales operations with a different title or even just an administrator for their CRM.

Obviously the role of revops depends on whether you’re more process- or product-oriented in your go-to-market strategy, but not all companies realize it’s strategic, not just technical.

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You’ve talked on LinkedIn about how you help businesses create a North Star roadmap. Could you explain that concept a little bit?

You need to have an executive strategy and a vision of where the company is going. Say you’re doing $20 million in ARR now, and by the end of 2024, you’re looking to get to $32 million. If you're not really clear on what that looks like, it's really hard to say how you’ll get there.

I think of the North Star Roadmap as an imaginary map that outlines where the company is going. I get all the executives and stakeholders to actually align on what this looks like, and then from that, we look for the operational gaps, and this way, everyone has clear visibility. 

For example, you want to get your $32 million, but you don't have your marketing automation in place, or your sales stages are two years old; the roadmap highlights where we need to take action to get the business to its North Star goal.

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What are some of the common revops challenges that you see businesses facing?

I think no one has their systems correct or properly set up.So many companies don't have proper customer journey mapping; how do they move through marketing, pass the prospect over to sales and so on? Most businesses don’t have that mapped from a process standpoint.

In my mind it’s just crucial for revenue operations to do that kind of due diligence, but it's just not sexy! People don't like doing it, but it's the foundation to growing the business at the end of the day.

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How do you encourage marketing, sales, and customer success teams to collaborate better?

Revops is typically the bridge between all the stakeholders across the team. The CMO, CRO, founder, president, head of CS; they're often not actually on the same page, or there are some internal struggles going on. 

What we're trying to say is, “if we win, everyone wins”. There's no “sales wins” or “marketing wins” or “customer success wins”. We all want to win, and winning is growing the revenue for the company at the end of the day.

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And how do you get those teams and stakeholders on board with process changes? How do you handle operational resistance?

Getting everyone to align on a common goal for the company is so important, especially at the C-suite level.

But another thing that I think helps is the fact that we’re an outside consulting firm; stakeholders really feel they can open up to us, perhaps more so than if they were afraid of offending people internally.

We unpack and uncover a lot by just asking a lot of “why” questions that helps focus everyone on common goals and creates this sense of trust and transparency.

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You’ve also written about your Conveyer Belt Methodology for revops. Could you explain how that works?

The Conveyer Belt Methodology is huge for us and something that features in all our proposals. The way we see it, sales, marketing, customer success, finance, and product need to work in unison in a conveyor belt in order to grow company revenue.

People talk about the funnel, about “TOFU” (top of funnel) or “BOFU” (bottom of funnel), but I don't believe in the funnel anymore. In my mind, you have a conveyer belt, starting with product, then on to marketing, to sales, to customer success onwards.

And we really believe that customer success is a huge revenue generator. It's not just servicing the accounts, it's working day in and day out with the accounts to actually grow the business.

So then you have finance dealing with revenue recognition, forecasting, deals, and expansions, and then all that information informs back to product, so the conveyor belt starts over again. 

I think it’s a much better way of thinking about revenue operations as a whole because with the funnel methodology, people just fall out the bottom as customers. There's so much more to it than that!

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How do you see AI and automation affecting revops going forward?

I’m a huge fan of AI, a huge fan of automation. I find if we come into a project as a team of five, we can actually act as a team of almost eight to ten if we're bringing in AI and automation. From an agency perspective, it really helps us deliver for clients because maybe they could get there in 12 to 18 months, but within six months, my team can accelerate that growth so much faster.

Then we can also introduce repeatable process within organizations to make teams more efficient. If we can enable teams with technology and AI to help them handle eliminate manual tasks and surface information faster, imagine how much more productive they could be.

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Finally, how would you describe revops to a five-year-old?

You have a business and you're looking to make more money in your business, but you don't know how to make more money in your business. So you have people in your business, you have systems in your business, and your people need to do a series of actions to make more money. And that's what revops is!

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Make sure you follow Stacie on LinkedIn for more revops insights!

‍If you're looking for more revops inspiration, check out our list of 20 must-follow revops leaders.