After fifteen years in this game, I’ve seen so many ways to win (and even more ways to lose).
I was there when “Sales Operations” was just one person with a messy Salesforce instance and a library of VLOOKUPs.
I remember when Marketing Ops was a siloed function that celebrated MQLs without a thought for what happened next.
We lived in a world of disconnected fiefdoms, each guarding its own data, its own processes, and its own definition of success.
The rise of Revenue Operations (aka RevOps) was our revolution. It was a promise to tear down those walls and build a single, unified engine to power the entire go-to-market motion. The goal was simple, yet profound: align people, processes, and technology across the entire customer lifecycle to drive predictable, scalable growth.
Now, as a leader, you’ve secured the headcount. You’ve been given the mandate to build this engine. You have a budget for yourself and three hires. This is the moment where theory meets reality, and the pressure is on. How you structure this initial four-person team will dictate its impact, its agility, and its ability to deliver on that grand RevOps promise for years to come.
There’s no single “right” answer. The ideal structure for a fast-moving, product-led growth startup is fundamentally different from what a high-touch enterprise software company needs. But over the years, I’ve seen three core models emerge. Each is a valid blueprint with its own distinct advantages and inherent trade-offs.
Today, I’m going to walk you through these three models:
The Functional Specialist Model: The classic, clear-cut approach.
The Go-to-Market Alignment Model: The customer-centric, strategic approach.
The Hybrid “SWAT Team” Model: The agile, problem-solving approach.
For each, we’ll break down the structure, the roles, and the pros and cons I’ve learned firsthand… often the hard way.
Let’s get to work.
Model 1: The Functional Specialist Model
This is the most intuitive and common starting point for a new RevOps team. It mirrors the departmental structure of the business itself, creating clear lines of ownership and fostering deep functional expertise. In this model, your three hires become dedicated specialists for each stage of the traditional funnel.
The Structure:
You (RevOps Leader): You are the strategic hub, the connective tissue. You own the end-to-end revenue process, manage cross-functional projects, set the overall RevOps roadmap, and translate the team’s work into executive-level insights about revenue predictability and pipeline health.
Marketing Operations (MOps) Specialist: This person lives and breathes the top of the funnel. Their world revolves around the Marketing Automation Platform (MAP) like HubSpot or Marketo. They own lead lifecycle management, campaign operations, lead scoring models, email nurture streams, database hygiene, and marketing attribution. Their primary stakeholders are the demand generation and product marketing teams.
Sales Operations (SOps) Specialist: This is your CRM guru, focused on the middle of the funnel—from qualified lead to closed deal. They manage the Salesforce or other CRM instance, territory planning, lead routing, quoting and CPQ tools, sales forecasting models, and sales process optimization. They are the go-to partner for the sales leadership and account executives.
Customer/Post-Sales Operations (CS Ops) Specialist: This specialist owns everything that happens after the initial contract is signed. They focus on the systems and processes that drive adoption, retention, and expansion. This includes customer onboarding workflows, customer health scoring, renewals and upsell/cross-sell processes, and the integration of support systems like Zendesk or Gainsight with the CRM. Their key stakeholders are the Customer Success, Account Management, and Professional Services teams.
Your MOps person will become a marketing automation tool wizard. Your SOps specialist will know every corner of your Salesforce org. This depth is invaluable when you have complex, function-specific problems to solve. Need to build a multi-touch attribution model? Your MOps expert is on it. Need to re-design your territory carving rules? Your SOps pro has it covered.
The job market is structured this way. It is far easier to find and vet a candidate with “5 years of Sales Ops experience” than it is to find a true “full-funnel RevOps generalist with analysis experience” The roles are well-defined, making it simpler to write job descriptions and evaluate candidates.
The King of Clarity
This is perhaps the biggest advantage. When a lead routing rule breaks, everyone knows who to call. When the sales forecast report is off, there’s a clear owner. This simplifies communication and accountability, which is critical in the early days of building trust with your stakeholder departments.
Each specialist has a clear and dedicated set of internal customers. This builds strong partnerships. The Head of Sales knows the SOps specialist is their person, and that dedicated focus can accelerate progress on their specific priorities.
Cons of the Functional Specialist Model:
Risk of Recreating Silos: This is the model’s greatest danger. Without strong leadership from you, you can inadvertently rebuild the very walls RevOps was designed to demolish. The MOps specialist might optimize for MQL volume without considering conversion rates, while the SOps specialist obsesses over sales cycle length without seeing how poor onboarding (a CS Ops domain) is affecting renewal rates.
Friction at the Handoffs: The customer journey isn’t a series of discrete steps; it’s a continuous flow. This model creates natural fault lines at the handoffs: from marketing to sales (MQL to SQL) and from sales to customer success (Closed-Won to Onboarding). These handoffs are where data gets lost, context is dropped, and the customer experience suffers. Your job as the leader becomes a constant exercise in bridging these gaps.
“Not My Problem” Mentality: When a complex issue arises that spans two functions—say, a problem with how product usage data from the CS platform is being used in lead scoring in the MAP—it can lead to finger-pointing. Each specialist may only see their piece of the puzzle, making holistic problem-solving a challenge.
Limited Career Pathing: Specialists can become pigeonholed in their function. For ambitious team members, this can feel limiting. They aren’t getting broad exposure to the entire revenue engine, which can stifle their growth into future RevOps leaders.
The Functional Specialist Model is a solid, safe choice, especially if your company has relatively mature and complex processes within each department. It’s a pragmatic way to get started and deliver value quickly.
But be warned: you, as the leader, must be hyper-vigilant about fostering a holistic, customer-centric culture and actively managing the cross-functional handoffs to prevent silos from creeping back in.
Model 2: The Go-to-Market Alignment Model
This model represents a more evolved, business-centric approach to RevOps. Instead of organizing your team around internal functions (Marketing, Sales, CS), you structure it around your company’s distinct go-to-market motions or customer segments. This requires a different type of RevOps professional—one who thinks less about a specific technology and more about the entire journey of a specific customer type.
The Structure: