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. This post summarizes the second day's sessions I attended, while the previous post covers the first day's sessions.
Sessions in this post:
RevOps in Action: Embracing Dynamic Markets to Deliver Organizational Value
I also wrote about the 2024 conference sessions in three blogs that start here.
Ross Graber presented on “RevOps in Action: Embracing Dynamic Markets to Deliver Organizational Value” at #RevOpsAF 2025.
He compared RevOps to a huge painting by Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, that is created entirely of paint dots, since RevOps connects all the dots to make an impact. Though doing RevOps is not often like a Sunday afternoon in the park!
Forrester Research has shown that customer-obsessed companies outperform peers:
Customer obsession is more than liking customers or happy feelings.
It’s a perpetual business orientation.
Puts the customer at the center of leadership, strategy, and operations.
Maximizes value for company and customer.
Requires companywide alignment.
Enter Revenue Operations …
A highly configured, iterative commercial execution strategy designed to maximize customer value and company performance. Revenue operations unifies and optimizes data, processes, technology, and talent to better serve the customer lifecycle.
Ross shared a graphic of the Customer-Obsessed Revenue Operations Strategy Model.
The B2B buying process is complex, involving:
Marketing and sales influence buying across all stages:
This means marketing and sales are not a relay race, handing off; they are running hand in hand the entire three-legged race.
Business buying remains bumpy:
The impact of RevOps isn’t what we’d hoped:
57% of sales ops leaders and 64% of marketing leaders don’t trust measurement & analytics for decision-making.
Misalignment and a lack of department subject matter expertise stand among the top RevOps challenges. So, RevOps needs to work as a team since no one person has all the expertise needed.
Process discipline falls short:
Factors defining RevOps in 2025
What to do next:
That is the path to connecting the dots, creating a beautiful picture, and driving the growth we need.
See this LinkedIn post and comments here.
Ashley Naumann Vonella, Stephanie Martin, and Julia Roth discussed ‘ RevOps as the Go-To-Market Peacekeeper’ at #RevOpsAF 2025.
How can RevOps bridge the gap between departments to create a unified motion?
Stephanie: Break down and DOCUMENT how each team will work together at each inflection point in the customer journey, so everyone knows their position on the field
Julia: Map out what the customer's experience is and how each team can contribute to the experience along the way, since it's not a clear handoff anymore, it's a team effort across the whole journey. RevOps works with internal and external customers, and a gap analysis helps find gaps in knowledge, communication, experience vs expectation.
How can RevOps leadership adopt a data-driven, customer-centric approach?
Stephanie: Understand (agree and document!) the value a customer needs to be successful with your product. After the customer buys, refer to it to ensure you are delivering that value.
Ashley: Two leaders having a different definition of the same thing is a common issue. Go back to the document where you defined it together to agree.
Julia: Define leads and which lifecycle stages are needed in our specific business. If there is disagreement, people avoid the process and do their own thing. Data is the common ground.
How do you resolve friction between sales and marketing over lead quality?
Julia: Get everyone in a room, discuss and make a decision on how that quality and components look, how each team processes that lead & the time for each lead.
How can RevOps serve as a neutral facilitator when teams have competing priorities?
Stephanie: Understand everyone’s goals to help people get what they want. Use your negotiation skills to bridge the gap.
Julia: RevOps is a mediator, leverage how the marketing goal translates into what sales is doing.
Ashley: We help teams work together. We have to take a C-Suite perspective of what’s best for the business, unbiased data conclusions, not swayed by any one team.
Change Management:
Julia: Change is disruptive. People get used to doing things a certain way. To avoid resistance, you need to get buy-in early so people understand all the whys. If the change is big, break it into small phases, communicate the rollout and what to expect, enable and educate along the way, so people feel like part of the change process and not like it is being pushed onto them.
Stephanie: Changes should make things better. Clearly articulate what’s in it for them, how it will make their lives easier.
What are some new tool implementation pitfalls for alignment?
Too many tools. You need to establish a tool-buying process.
Stephanie: A new tool is disruptive, so you need to be judicious about when and why.
Ashley: Being properly tooled for the size of the company is important; at different stages, you may need a different tech stack.
Julia: Think about how the tool will communicate and integrate with the existing stack. Consider total cost of ownership: implementation, training, maintenance, admin…
Hot Takes!
Stephanie: Embracing AI is key. Make sure everyone is educated on it.
Julia: You need to balance growth vs efficiency, optimizing vs building, building for growth vs building for maintenance.
Ashley: Use data to become a strategic partner when moving into leadership.
Make sure you have an actual problem to solve with AI before introducing AI, have a clear and well-documented use case.
Wrap Up
See the LinkedIn post and comments for this session here.
Werner Schmidt presented ‘How to Build a Scalable Sales Planning and Decision Intelligence Process’ at #RevOpsAF 2025.
Problems with traditional sales planning:
A better sales planning and decision intelligence process:
PRODUCTIVITY -> SIMULATIONS -> PLANNING -> QUOTAS -> EXECUTION
Productivity: The Foundation to Smarter Planning
Why Focus on Productivity?
Not isolated wins, systemic patterns.
Simulations — Pressure-Test Every Strategic Move
Turn 'what if' into 'now we know’ before committing to major changes
Planning
Real planning isn’t about setting a big target and hoping.
It connects actual productivity, ramp times, attrition, and changes into a model that breathes with your business.
The best plans reflect the real world — not just the boardroom whiteboard.
Quotas
Done right, they push teams to excel. Quotas as culture builders.
Done wrong, they crush morale and break trust.
Quotas must match real-world productivity and ramping patterns, not top-down wishes
It's not just about hitting a number — it's about sustainable performance
Execution
Track what’s working and where you need to course-correct
It’s the only way to spot risks, fix gaps, and capitalize on opportunities in real time.
Execution isn't the end of planning — it's an ongoing, living signal that drives constant improvement.
Key takeaways:
See the LinkedIn post and comments for this session here.
Sandy Robinson closed the #RevOpsAF 2025 conference with a keynote on “Fostering Collaboration & Influencing Decisions.”
Sandy started a new role recently & at the first meeting with the leaders asked: What are the biggest problems for generating revenue?
Where would you start?
Start with what impacts revenue the most.
Choose 4 and 5 above, they are a similar revenue problem.
The other problems are symptoms.
After many years of this work, you can start to see the problems, causes, symptoms, etc. like viewing the Matrix, with Sandy as Trinity.
As #RevOps leaders we want to fix all those problems.
But we need a strategy.
How can RevOps be Strategic?
Surveys say key RevOps resoponsibilties include:
From Reactive to Proactive…
RevOps Strategy:
I.C.E.
Investigate, Collaborate, Educate
(Which explains the Ice Ice Baby walk on song :) )
Investigate:
Mapping out the buying journey = a great way to approach your investigation, will lead to collaboration
Collaborate:
Create a customer journey map to reduce friction, focus on process, to engage people and not point the finger while also getting core RevOps work done! Redo in 6-12 months to see new challenges and help collaborate.
Educate:
Why do we have to educate so well?
Because of all of the SILOS!
Leaders are in charge of their own areas, there’s a huge need to educate them on what’s in it for them, the value of the initiative for them.
Every company has silos, even small ones.
Each person has their own team and initiatives to worry about.
RevOps needs to work across silos and bring people together.
(I was honored to be on this dream team of Jeff, Mallory Matt Volm, Mark Glasgow, tana jackson even if we are representing silos lol )
There’s never ONE solution to big RevOps problems.
Some of the results from Sandy’s initial problem-solving:
See the LinkedIn post and comments for this session here.