First Five Reports a New Head of Revenue Operations Should Build
Welcome to the War Room.
Sit down.
You have just taken the title: Head of Revenue Operations.
It sounds impressive. It sounds strategic.
Do not be fooled.
Right now, you are walking into a crime scene.
The CRM is not a database. It is a graveyard of good intentions and bad discipline. It is a chaotic sprawling mess of “nice-to-have” fields, abandoned validation rules, and rot.
Most people in your position view themselves as librarians.
They think their job is to organize the books. To dust the shelves. To make sure the picklists are alphabetical.
This is why they fail. This is why they are replaced by a script.
You are not a librarian. You are a Chief Engineer.
You are building a High-Performance Revenue Engine.
In the B2B SaaS environment, revenue is not magic. It is not “the art of the deal.” It is physics.
It is Input. It is Compression. It is Ignition. It is Output.
If you treat this job like an art project, you will starve. If you treat it like a machine, you will dominate.
Your first 90 days are not about making friends. They are about installing sensors.
You need to strip the engine down to the block. You need to see where the oil is leaking. You need to see which pistons are misfiring.
You do not need 50 reports. You do not need a “Wall of Dashboards” that looks pretty in a Board Deck but tells you nothing about why you missed the quarter.
You need five.
Five monitors on the health of the machine. Five signals that separate signal from noise.
I build this in every company I invest in and across every B2B business I advise.
The Philosophy of the Machine
Before we touch Salesforce, we must align on the metaphor.
Your company is an Engine.
Marketing is the Intake Manifold. It sucks in air and fuel (Leads).
Sales Development is the Fuel Injector. It atomizes the fuel for combustion.
Account Executives are the Pistons. They compress the fuel and create the explosion (Revenue).
Customer Success is the Cooling System and Structural Integrity. They keep the machine from blowing itself apart under pressure.
Most Revenue Operations leaders focus on the paint job. They worry about page layouts.
You will focus on the Torque.
If the fuel is bad, the engine knocks. If the compression is low, the engine loses power. If the friction is too high, the engine seizes.
The following five reports are your diagnostic tools. They are non-negotiable.
The Intake Manifold: Lead Velocity & Leakage Analysis
We start at the beginning.
The Lie: “We need more leads.”
Every VP of Sales says this. It is their default setting. It is a panic response.
They shout at Marketing for more volume. Marketing responds by buying cheap lists and flooding the top of the funnel with garbage.
The system chokes.
You do not need more volume. You need Flow Integrity.
You need to know if the fuel is actually reaching the chamber, or if it is spilling onto the asphalt.
The Report: The Lead Status Velocity & “The Black Hole”
Most Salesforce instances track Lead Status (New, Open, Working, Qualified). This is a static picture. It is useless. It tells you where a lead is. It does not tell you how long it has been there.
Static data is dead data. Kinetic data is intelligence.
The Build:
You need to build a “Time in Status” report. But you must weaponize it.
Create a Report Type: Leads with Lead History.
The Filter: All Open Leads.
The Metric: Average Duration in
Newstatus. Average Duration inWorkingstatus.The Segmentation: Group by Lead Source. Group by SDR Owner.
The Execution:
Look for the “Rot.”
If a lead sits in New for more than 6 hours in a modern SaaS environment, it is not a lead. It is a corpse. If a lead sits in Working for 14 days without conversion, it is not being worked. It is being hoarded.
You will see immediate patterns.
You will see Rep A claiming they are “busy,” yet their leads rot in the queue for 48 hours. You will see Lead Source B (e.g., “Webinar Lists”) generating high volume but zero velocity. It clogs the injectors.
The Command:
Set up a “Wall of Shame” dashboard component. “Leads Untouched > 24 Hours.” List the owners.
Do not ask them to fix it. Show them the data. Shame is a powerful motivator. Efficiency is the only moral good.
The Compression Chamber: Stalled Opportunity & Stage Duration
Now we move to the pistons. The Pipeline.
