RevOps Co-op's RevOpsAF 2025 U.S. conference was held in New Orleans, Louisiana in May, as one of the only RevOps conferences created by RevOps professionals for the RevOps community.
Sessions in this post:
- Opening Keynote
- Why You Need to Pay More Attention to MOPs Today
- How to Learn RevOps
- How to Sell the Value of RevOps
- How to Build a Stage-Appropriate RevOps Team
There will be another post with the remaining sessions I attended coming soon.
I also wrote about the 2024 conference sessions in three blogs that start here.
Opening Remarks
The 2025 US RevOpsAF conference sessions kicked off on Wednesday, May 7, with opening remarks from Matthew Volm, CEO and Founder of RevOps Co-op.
Matt thanked Tessa Whittaker, VP of RevOps at ZoomInfo, for sponsoring the amazing gospel choir at our breakfast. And thanked the awesome crew at RevOps Co-op for all their hard work putting on this event. 👏
He began by asking: Why are you here?
To learn?
To get hired?
To hire someone?
To karaoke? 🎶
Through the power of community, people who attended last year’s conference were hired, promoted to VP roles, built integrations with companies they met last year…
Why does it matter?
Because RevOps is the most important job at every company on the face of the planet.
Because:
- Company valuations are based on a revenue multiplier
- Companies are sized based on revenue
A bit of history and context:
In 2007, the first blips of RevOps were mentioned on LinkedIn. The rise of AI correlates with the rise of RevOps (Matt joked that we made it 8 minutes into the conference without saying AI). People, process, tech, and data are important for RevOps, and AI can be positioned as the center of those subjects.
Things get tricky: Why RevOps can be difficult:
- You don't know what you don't know
- There's no formal training for RevOps, no degree
- You learned on the job based on prior limited experiences
The RevOps Co-op community provides a great starting point to help wth education, but now there is a RevOps certification based on Stephen Diorio's book, Revenue Operations, which provides a comprehensive foundation about the 35 gears in the company that RevOps touches and turns. Many people in a company focus on their own gears only, but RevOps needs to talk to and educate these departments about the other gears. Stephen’s been doing this for 40 years, teaching it at work and teaching it as an MBA class in the future.
RevOps needs to understand the math of finance and growth.
And communicate the value of RevOps to the C-suite.
Thank you, Matt!
See this LinkedIn post and comments here.
Opening Keynote
Ryan Westwood, CEO at Fullcast, gave the opening keynote at RevOpsAF 2025 about “Why RevOps is the Power Seat at the Table.” Ryan introduced himself and explained he has exited 3 companies, one of which he grew from $0-$400 million.
Growth is everyone's obsession, he said.
He was able to take one and a half years off to think. He realized what he cared about most was not the money, but the phone calls from people about the things that impacted their lives. The people you build the business with are the reward.
Be critical and choosy about the people you work with. Make sure they bring out the best in you, and you'll get the reward. Focus on the people.
When you are interviewing at a new company, ask the right questions to determine if these are the people you want to spend time with. The questions rarely asked are the ones that dictate the culture. We spend an embarrassing number of hours at work. You should spend the same amount of time and consideration choosing the people you work with as choosing a partner in life.
Ryan gave a Vin Diesel quote: “Whether you win by an inch or a mile, a win is a win.”
He has been winning in inches. The last 1% of work is where many other people give up, and that is where the money is made.
Every company is focused on:
- top line revenue
- bottom line margin
And the challenge is doing both at the same time.
If you speak to the CEO, use the context of these two above items to speak their language to explain RevOps priorities.
Growth without efficiency is chaos.
Efficiency without growth is stagnation.
RevOps enables both top-line revenue and bottom-line margin.
- You are uniquely positioned to drive efficient growth.
- You sit at the intersection of revenue, operations, and strategy. You are not siloed. You can look at the greater scope of the business.
- Every decision, from headcount to investment, runs through your insights.
Do you understand the budget of the company in totality?
Lots of cash burn means you need growth.
Lots of EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization) means efficiency is more important.
Compare last year to this year's numbers for the two above topics to see what needs to be done.
And what if a leader has a bonus related to a specific topic or metric? What do you need to do, and what do they care about from RevOps?
Understand how the budget is operating.
By looking at financial statements in this way, you can also gain an understanding of the competition. Are they in a spending era or not? Are their active investors looking for higher margins that give leadership job security?
Build your personal brand as the most trusted source of:
- Truth in data across the business
- Strategic foresight
- Brand protection
People are skeptical of data, so make sure it is credible data so that they trust you.
RevOps is not siloed, and it owns data, so it is in the best position to be strategic outside of the CEO… unless you don't play your cards right, if you are a glorified admin and take orders from the CRO.
Create camaraderie with the C-suite. Explain that you understand the full go-to-market motion. Put yourself on the same playing level by saying ‘I see what you see.’
When trust in data equals trust in you, your influence skyrockets.
He told a story about how a lead got an auto response that said, ‘Sorry, you're not big enough to be a customer,’ which was wrong, and RevOps fixed it. Someone in the company had said that fewer than 50 users was not ideal, then someone else at the company mixed it up and thought that was 50 employees as the target market.
Lesson: If you notice communication that is in conflict with the brand, call it out. Let the C-suite know that brand and reputation are important to you.
When you influence the boardroom, you change your career trajectory.
- Provide the board with the numbers they rely on.
- Expect more face time with the CEO, CFO, and COO.
- Be seen not just as an operator, but as a strategic leader.
Board Access = Investor Access = Career Leverage
Most board members are also investors. Investors need money. If you have $25,000 as a bonus, give it to a VC (venture capital investor) as a limited partner so you're becoming an investor of the investor of your company that you work for – this is the ultimate chess move.
You will get introductions from the VC, which will accelerate your career because if you're a CEO, you take those VC recommendations.
You can get to operating partner, interim exec, be an advisor, or join a board.
Note: don't always put your advisories at the top of your LinkedIn – that sends a bad signal to your current CEO of your company that you are distracted. Wait until the advisory is over.
Growth at all costs is out, efficient growth is in.
Raising money every 18 months is no longer realistic. There is more time between VC investment rounds, with an average of over 2 years. Lots of equity is eaten in the early stage now, and there is more ownership dilution. Know your numbers for your amount of equity. The most strategic founders and RevOps leaders preserve leverage at every stage.
Only ~50% of startups make it from Seed stage to Series A, even in boom years.
The Economics of Advisory & Board Roles
- Advisor: less than .25% equity
- Board of Directors: .25%-.5%
- Board Chair: 1-1.5%
Know that the different stages of a company require different amounts of time spent advising. A seed stage founder may call an advisor 50 times a week, so you might want to look for Stage A and beyond, and set boundaries on your time, as well as looking at the probability of exits, such as repeat founders and product market fit.
RevOps leaders have a front-row seat to the metrics that matter.
You can help founders see clearly when it's time to pivot, change direction, or even step away.
See the LinkedIn post and comments for this session here.
Why You Need to Pay More Attention to MOPs Today
The RevOpsAF panel, Why You Need to Pay More Attention to MOPs (Marketing Operations) Today, featured Camela Thompson, Natalie Furness, Nic Zangre, and Todd Sprinkel.
The disconnect:
80% of sales happen through digital channels (no salesperson)
But 54% of execs say their primary focus is improving salesperson productivity
Is marketing the new sales?
- Natalie talked about growth and how marketers are asked to run ABM (account-based marketing), but they don't have the infrastructure for it, so they should partner with RevOps
- Nic said execs want to cut the cost of customer acquisition in half
- Todd said more of the customer journey happens before the sales team talks to anyone
Key concerns:
- B2B data is super complex
- Third-party data is harder to come by
- Companies rarely invest in the systems and talent to get the most out of the customer journey
Nic said tooling and philosophies have to change to keep teams aligned. You need data warehouses, and reporting can no longer be done in a CRM.
Natalie said many clients have ops teams siloed, causing challenges. A shared data platform and shared ops work well, but the challenge is getting stakeholders to invest in that infrastructure.
Todd talked about learning marketing automation platforms at the beginning of his career, but the scope of work in marketing ops has broadened to own more of the customer journey.
Should MOPs be in RevOps?
- Todd doesn’t care where they sit, because it’s most important for ops people to talk to each other and be aware of moving pieces
- Natalie said it depends, she likes it in RevOps, if it’s not treated as email campaign ops
- Nic said it depends on leadership. Marketing ops needs to be free to tell an accurate data story, and not just what makes the boss look good
Tactical steps:
- Camela talked about understanding your strengths and not expecting all skills from one person, a team with complementary skill sets
- Todd uses a dashboard where all reports with a non-zero value indicate something to fix
- Natalie said that marketing understands lifecycle stages more than RevOps, so work together as a team to define stages and communicate. Todd also talked about knowing who is responsible for the customer at each stage. Camela joked that everyone gets along until you ask them to define a lead.
Hot takes:
Nic: Getting ‘AI ready’ requires a holistic data strategy to train it. And Salesforce is no longer the source of truth.
Natalie: You can’t be an expert in everything, so know there are other people you can learn from in a company to go-to-market together.
Todd thinks saying the MQL (marketing qualified lead) is dead is wrong. MQL as a goal is dead; it should only be a signal to make sense of what’s happening.
Questions & Answers
How do you manage leadership expectations of using AI in MOps?
Camela said do not choose the hardest problem to solve first (cold outbound). Start small, like using AI to standardize industry fields.
Natalie said she has a hierarchy of AI needs. You need to go through or progress through all the levels in order and can’t just skip to the last stage.
See the LinkedIn post and comments for this session here.
How to Learn RevOps
Jeff Ignacio presented “How to Learn RevOps” at RevOpsAF 2025.
How did Jeff learn RevOps?
Jeff was working in Financial Planning and Analysis at Google, where he partnered closely with Global Sales Operations. Then he took a job at a startup and learned on the job, combining other disciplines and applying them to go-to-market work.
Many people in RevOps don’t have this extensive tour of duty. When you start working at a company that has no info on what RevOps is about, it’s up to you to shape what RevOps is. It also means no onboarding, and you have to figure it out.
4 pillars to learn in RevOps
PEAS: process, enablement, advisory, systems
Process
Process defines the standardized workflows that align marketing, sales, and customer success to drive consistent revenue outcomes.
- In a smaller company, decisions are faster/easier. In larger companies, use a decision-making process for big choices like adding a new product or a new market. You’ll need to know more about the product roadmap, such as when a new feature will launch: will sales be ready to talk about it, will marketing have enough lead time to promote it
- Context switching all day is hard, when you're tailoring your language to what the person you’re talking to cares about
- When asking how long a task takes, ask them to break it into hands-on-keyboard time AND change management time
Enablement
Enablement equips teams with holistic programs of tools, training, and content to effectively engage prospects, close deals & more. Not just Slack updates and Gong call listening.
- Can be peers or on the ops team. Should not be corporate learning and development, the people need to be embedded in revenue departments
- Over-do the documentation since everyone under-does it – thank you for my course shoutout!
Advisory
Advisory involves analyzing data & trends to provide strategic insights that guide decision-making across the revenue engine.
- Not stuck in the details of technical work
- Not whispering in someone’s ear, but building leader relationships
- Advising based on what that person cares about, using active listening & empathy, make your messaging align with their fears and excitement
- Use systems thinking, the scientific method, or both combined
Systems
Systems encompass the tech stack and data infrastructure that support revenue-generating activities.
- The red meat of RevOps, people often gravitate here
- Balance short-term day-to-day administration with long-term architecture for scalability
- Think in terms of cures (removing tech debt) vs painkillers (easier to get budget for) vs vitamins for the solutions you suggest.
- Don’t say yes to every tool change or request
You need all 4 PEAS in concert for success, and it’s never a well-oiled machine at the start.
For leaders, the acronym changes to LEAPS:
Add an L for leadership: communication, proactive development of what the business needs, and work back from there.
See the LinkedIn post and comments for this session here.
How to Sell the Value of RevOps
Jacki Leahy of Activate the Magic presented “How to Sell the Value of RevOps” at RevOpsAF 2025, starting with an official RevOps anthem of “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”
This session gave frameworks and templates to speak the language of the C-Suite and secure approvals with confidence, since our work isn’t a budget line item, changed at the pleasure of whoever is in charge.
Why you’re here, as stewards and caretakers of the revenue engine:
- Curious, want to level up, sitting pretty at work 😊
- Can’t get no satisfaction, casually looking 🫥
- HELP everything is on fire, job is in danger 😵
PSCP Framework = Pain, Confirm, Solution, Present
Use this framework to catch the rest of the company up to your brilliance, as someone who is often several steps ahead and sees patterns before others, following bread crumbs.
Pain:
What’s the most expensive thing holding the system back?
Observe and Analyze
Use the Winning By Design Bowtie model and Theory of Constraints to uncover the most expensive friction point.
Pick one.
Strategically ignore the rest.
Yes, even if it's a dumpster fire.
Thank you to Jacki for giving the audience these adorable dumpster fire emoji pins!
Strategic means deciding what to focus on and what NOT to focus on. Strategically let things burn. You’re not here to fix everything. You’re here to fix the RIGHT things. Distinguish Initiatives (strategic, handled one at a time) from Ad-Hoc requests (unblock and support those within reason).
Mindset shift: You are not reactive ops, you are strategic infrastructure for revenue, so focus = ROI.
Action: Block time weekly for recurring firewatch (ad-hoc request triage time), and for deep work on ONE of your initiatives.
Confirm:
Socialize what you’ve noticed.
Do others agree THIS is important?
Use the scientific method (observe, analyze, deduce, hypothesize) to generate buy-in and alignment for your initiative’s hypothesis. Before you prescribe, observe. Act like a scientist, not a firefighter. Validate the constraint with qualitative and quantitative data.
Action: Do ride-alongs with those team members completing the process, 15-minute interviews, live mapping sessions, and questionnaires about friction and waste to see patterns.
This confirms the constraint is real, builds trust early through active listening, and starts to socialize the future initiative.
Solution:
Design a solution that fixes the key constraint.
Crunch the numbers.
Calculate the cold, hard cash ROI of your initiative to make it a ‘no-duh’ investment, even for the CFO.
Jacki shared a calculator and examples.
Present:
Bring your hypothesis to leadership.
Convey impact with numbers.
Show your work.
Strategically gain momentum across the company by emulating an enterprise sales master.
Jacki shared a stakeholder account plan and templates.
Next steps: Block time on your calendar now for your deep focus initiative work
See the LinkedIn post and comments for this session here.
How to Build a Stage-Appropriate RevOps Team
Cliff Simon presented “How to Build a Stage-Appropriate RevOps Team” at RevOpsAF 2025.
It’s hard to be a strategic leader and also get the day-to-day work done.
It’s also very hard to find and retain talent.
The Problem with "Wing It" Ops:
Most companies scale RevOps reactively…when it’s already too late.
Instead, companies should invest in RevOps early and often for efficient, durable growth.
Two scenarios you want to avoid:
- Underspend: You can’t get pipeline built, deals die in ops hell, no one owns enablement. You’re seen as a cost center.
- Overspend: You hire a small army—then have to lay off half when revenue doesn’t match headcount.
Stage-Specific RevOps:
- Early Stage (Seed–Series A): One Scrappy Person
- Growth Stage (B–C): Layered Functions
- Scale Stage (D+): Centralized with broad business responsibilities
Capacity Planning: Define the Scope
- What does your team actually need to get done? Maybe not a full-time architect, maybe fractional.
- Ruthless prioritization beats wishlists. You need to move the business forward or have an impact on lots of people.
- Don’t confuse tasks with outcomes—focus on revenue impact. CEOs think and speak in bullet points, metrics, and dollars, matching their language.
Bandwidth Mapping
- Map workload by hours per week per function: CRM hygiene, pipeline reporting, onboarding, enablement, etc. Set expectations with the CEO, like “We can do X per week.” Push back.
- “If one person owns 60 hours of work, they’re not a superhero—they’re a future resignation.”
He schedules 34-38 hours of hands-on keyboard time to leave time for meetings.
You’d rather have 3 years of a team member’s A- game than 3 months of an A+ game, then they burnout and leave.
Use Ratios, But Don’t Worship Them.
Too often, companies underinvest in RevOps.
- Early stage: 1 ops person per 25 revenue team members
- Scale stage: 1 per 16-22
- Growth stage: 1 per 12-15
Parallel Planning: Build Three Plans
- Just Enough to Function
- Expected Growth Plan
- Stretch Scenario
Then Sell the Plan Internally. Build buy-in from:
- CRO: Focus on Revenue and Velocity/Conversions
- CFO: Talk in terms of efficiency, not headcount
- CMO: Ability to drive revenue through their spend
Tip: Share success stories from other companies (“Company X scaled wrong and had to rip out their CPQ mid-year. It cost them $300K.”)
THE REAL WORLD
As you grow to $1B, you combine to centralized RevOps, then when the team is larger, you break out into business units since it is unwieldy to have a RevOps team that size.
It doesn’t matter who owns ops; what matters is that the leader CARES about ops.
Framework: Your Ops Build Plan
- Stage-appropriate roles defined
- Tasks mapped and weighted
- Bandwidth measured
- Capacity plan with three scenarios
- Internal pitch deck aligned to exec priorities
Final Takeaways
- RevOps is a force multiplier—not a luxury.
- Plan early.
- Plan multiple.
- Sell hard internally.
See the LinkedIn post and comments for this session here.
Read more recaps from RevOpsAF 2025 in a Part 2 blog soon!