5 Lessons from a Revenue Operator
Your business is not a family. It is not a community. It is not a playground.
Your business is a Machine.
It is an input-output system designed to convert energy—capital, labor, attention—into velocity.
For years, you have treated Revenue Operations like the janitorial staff. You viewed them as the people who clean up the CRM. The people who fix the commission spreadsheets. The people you call when your password doesn’t work.
This is a fatal error.
In the modern economic theater, the market is not a fair fight. It is a drag race on a track covered in ice.
The companies that win are not the ones with the flashiest paint jobs (Marketing). They are not the ones with the loudest drivers (Sales). They are the ones with the most efficient engines.
RevOps is not support. RevOps is the Transmission.
It is the mechanism that ensures the raw torque of your product actually reaches the wheels of the market. Without it, you are just making noise and burning fuel. You are revving the engine in neutral while your competitors disappear over the horizon.
I have spent years inside the machine. I have seen the pistons fire. I have seen the gaskets blow. I have seen million-dollar vehicles stalled on the side of the road because someone ignored a ten-cent seal.
Here are the 5 lessons from the mechanic’s pit.
This is how you tune the engine. This is how you survive the race.
Lesson 1: Friction is the Entropy of Profit
Physics dictates a cruel truth: Energy is always lost to heat.
In a combustion engine, friction robs you of power. In your revenue engine, friction robs you of capital.
Every time a Sales Development Rep (SDR) has to copy-paste data from one tab to another? That is friction.
Every time a contract gets stuck in legal review because the approval workflow is ambiguous? That is heat.
Every time Marketing passes a lead that Sales cannot see because the systems don’t talk? That is a blown gasket.
You are obsessed with “working harder.” You tell your team to push the pedal down. You demand more activity. More calls. More demos.
Stop.
Pushing a car with the parking brake on does not make it go faster. It destroys the brakes.
The Operator’s mandate is not to add more fuel. It is to smooth the cylinder walls.
The Audit: Look at your quote-to-cash process. Map every single click. Map every single handoff. Map every single decision point.
If a human being is doing work that a script could do, you are burning capital. If a human being is waiting for permission to do their job, you are losing velocity.
The Fix: Ruthlessly eliminate the drag. Automate the low-value tasks. Standardize the high-value tasks.
If the process does not add velocity, it is a parasite. Cut it out.
Lesson 2: The Dashboard Is Not The Windshield
We are drowning in data. We are starving for wisdom.
Most operators treat their CRM like a history book. They look at what happened last quarter. They look at closed-won deals. They look at churn from last year.
This is driving while looking in the rear-view mirror. Do this long enough, and you will hit a wall.
Lagging indicators are autopsies. They tell you why the patient died. They do not save the patient.
A high-performance machine requires real-time telemetry. You need to know the temperature of the oil before the engine seizes.
The Pivot: Stop obsessing over “Revenue Closed.” Start obsessing over “Pipeline Velocity.”
Revenue is the result. Velocity is the cause.
You need to measure the inputs that predict the outputs.
It is not about the number of calls. It is about the connection rate.
It is not about the number of opportunities. It is about the stage-to-stage conversion delta.
It is not about the deal size. It is about the sales cycle length.
The Signal: Build a dashboard that screams at you when the inputs deviate. If the time-in-stage for “Proposal Sent” jumps from 4 days to 7 days, you have a leak in the line. Fix it now.
Do not wait for the quarter to end. Do not wait for the board meeting. By then, the race is already lost.
Lesson 3: Data Hygiene = Survival
There is a lie you tell yourself. “We will clean up the data later.” “We just need to get the deals in now.” “The field is messy, but we will fix it in Q4.”
This is the logic of a hoarder. And it will bury you.
Your data is not just numbers on a screen. Your data is the structural integrity of your chassis.
If your data is dirty, your reporting is a hallucination. If your data is fragmented, your strategy is a guess. If your data is incomplete, your AI tools are useless toys.
You are trying to bolt a Formula 1 engine (Advanced AI/Automation) onto a rusted-out 1998 Honda Civic frame (Bad Data). The moment you apply torque, the frame will snap.
The Hard Truth: Sales reps lie. Not because they are evil. Because they are human. They will enter the bare minimum information to get paid. They will sandbag dates. They will inflate probabilities.
You cannot rely on discipline. You must rely on constraints.
The Operator’s Law: If it is not in the system, it does not exist. If the data is entered incorrectly, the commission is not paid.
Validation rules are not administrative annoyance. They are the rivets holding the chassis together.
Enforce the schema. Standardize the taxonomy. Protect the database like it is the nuclear codes.
Because in the algorithmic age, he who has the cleanest data wins. Everyone else is just guessing.
Lesson 4: The Tool Is Not The Talent
“We have a conversion problem. Let’s buy a new sales engagement platform.” “We have a churn problem. Let’s buy a customer success tool.” “We have a forecasting problem. Let’s buy a predictive analytics layer.”
Stop buying tools.
You are falling for the “Retail Therapy” of operations. You are trying to buy competence with a credit card.
A bad process automated is just a bad process running faster. Amplifying incompetence does not create competence. It creates chaos at scale.
The Architecture: Before you sign another software contract, you must build the analog circuit.
Can you do this process on a whiteboard? Can you do this process with a pen and paper? Can you explain the logic to a five-year-old?
If you cannot, the software will not save you. It will only accelerate your confusion.
The Stack Strategy: Your tech stack should be a skeleton. Lean. Connected. Essential.
Every new tool adds complexity. Complexity adds weight. Weight reduces speed.
Do not add a tool unless it removes two others. Do not add a feature unless it solves a critical bottleneck.
Be a minimalist. Be a surgeon. Cut the bloat.
The goal is not to have the most sophisticated cockpit. The goal is to cross the finish line.
Lesson 5: Alignment is Binary
There are only two states for an organization:
Alignment.
War.
In most companies, Sales is at war with Marketing. Marketing is at war with Finance. Customer Success is at war with Product.
They fight over attribution. They fight over lead quality. They fight over budget.
This is internal friction. It is an autoimmune disease. The body is attacking itself.
When the cylinders in an engine fire out of sync, the engine vibrates. If the vibration gets bad enough, the engine tears itself apart from the inside.
The Operator’s Role: You are not a peacekeeper. You are the Timing Belt.
Your job is to force synchronization. You do not ask for alignment. You engineer it.
The Unification: Destroy the silos. There is no “Marketing Funnel.” There is no “Sales Funnel.” There is only The Revenue Funnel.
One set of definitions. One set of metrics. One truth.
If Marketing celebrates hitting their lead goal, but Sales misses their revenue number? No one celebrates. Marketing failed.
If Sales closes a deal that churns in 90 days? Sales failed.
Incentivize the entire machine, not the individual parts. Force them to look at the same dashboard. Force them to speak the same language.
If they refuse to sync, replace the parts. The machine does not tolerate dissonance.
The Final Assembly
You have a choice.
You can continue to run your business by feel. You can continue to rely on heroics and luck. You can continue to accept the friction, the waste, and the noise.
That is the path of the amateur. That is the path of the prey.
Or you can become an Operator.
You can strip the machine down to the bolts. You can clean the grime. You can tighten the seals. You can align the gears.
It is not glamorous work. It is not easy work. It requires a cold, clinical eye. It requires the stomach to make hard cuts. It requires the discipline to maintain the standard when everyone else wants to cut corners.
But when the light turns green... When the market shifts... When the pressure mounts...
The amateurs will stall. The rusted frames will snap. The overheated engines will smoke.
And you? You will engage the transmission. You will apply the torque. And you will vanish.
Build the machine. Own the road.
Execute.
Friends: in addition to the 21% discount for becoming annual paid members, we are excited to announce an additional 10% discount when paying with Bitcoin. Reach out to me, these discounts stack on top of each other!
👋 Thank you for reading Mastering Revenue Operations.
To help continue our growth, please Like, Comment and Share this post.
I started this in November 2023 because revenue technology and revenue operations methodologies started evolving so rapidly I needed a focal point to coalesce ideas, outline revenue system blueprints, discuss go-to-market strategy amplified by operational alignment and logistical support, and all topics related to revenue operations.
Mastering Revenue Operations is a central hub for the intersection of strategy, technology and revenue operations. Our audience includes Fortune 500 Executives, RevOps Leaders, Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs.