Last year, Director of Revenue Operations was one of the fastest growing jobs in the US. Yet here at Coppett Hill we find that many businesses still lack clarity what the role can mean and its potential impact. The true value of Revenue Operations (RevOps) lies in building an efficient, scalable revenue engine by aligning processes, systems, and data across teams, helping address revenue leakage and deliver seamless customer experiences.
Recently, I spoke with Nik Kumar, Head of Revenue Operations at Mention Me, to explore how RevOps works in practice, the challenges it addresses, and practical advice for building a successful function that gains internal buy-in.
Mention Me is a referral platform that helps marketers identify, acquire, and nurture their best customers through referral programs. To give a sense of the scale of their operations, approximately 2,000 companies engage with their marketing and sales funnel each year, with an additional 15,000-20,000 prospects in their CRM who meet their ideal client profile (ICP).
Revenue Operations in Practice: engineering efficiency and growth
As Mention Me’s Head of RevOps, Nik works behind the scenes to connect marketing, sales, client services, and finance to streamline the entire client lifecycle, from lead generation to ongoing client management. While marketing and sales can be seen as the production line driving the business forward, Nik likens RevOps to factory engineers: connecting parts, identifying bottlenecks, and flagging issues for resolution. For instance, a drop in lead volume can have significant downstream implications for the output of this ‘factory’. Nik’s role is to anticipate and address these challenges before they disrupt operations: “If our inbound lead numbers are low, we’re going to face an expansion problem nine months down the line. My role is to keep the whole production line moving and predict where it might break before it actually does.”
This proactive approach requires constantly evaluating key questions, such as: How are leads acquired, nurtured, and handed off to sales? How are they handed over to the onboarding team once they become a client? Reflecting on this, Nik emphasises the difficulty of connecting these dots without a unified function overseeing the entire journey: “It’s impossible to provide insight across the entire process unless it’s handled by one function.”
To bring this to life, Nik highlights a couple of recent examples where RevOps has delivered tangible value at Mention Me. “I’ve been working with our Chief Growth Officer (CGO) to improve forecast accuracy,” Nik shares. “We’ve implemented automated visualisations that compare, as a percentage, our committed revenue on any given day of the month with the actual revenue closed by the end of the same month. This insight allows us to adjust our tactical in-month plays if the forecasted figure early in the month isn’t where we want it to be, ensuring we approach deals differently where needed. While forecasting hasn’t been our strong suit in the past, this visual has shown a stable line over the past six months, with our forecasts consistently within ±10% of the end of month value.”
Continuing on the value of predictive insight, Nik describes how his team have also helped address year-one churn, a primary concern for their Head of Client. “We realised we weren’t focussing on the right factors - we were over-forecasting client performance when they joined and not servicing them to the appropriate level. By identifying metrics that signal lagging performance within the first six months, we can now predict churn risks and highlight where actionable improvements are needed.”
These examples highlight the importance of understanding each component of the revenue-generating process while maintaining an end-to-end perspective. By establishing systems to flag potential issues before they arise, an effective RevOps function creates more proactive processes for identifying bottlenecks in customer acquisition and retention. “At which point,” Nik notes, “it’s about getting the right people in a room, presenting the issue, and explaining how they can solve it.”
RevOps Challenges: Aligning Teams and Processes for Success
One of the biggest challenges in RevOps is managing competing goals across teams. “Misaligned targets – such as marketing focusing only on MQLs and sales only on closed-won deals – often lead to disagreements about source ownership and a lack of responsibility during deals,” Nik explains. This misalignment not only hinders collaboration but also makes it difficult to trace what went wrong in pivotal deals and identify areas for improvement. At Coppett Hill, we recommend that marketing and sales plans are aligned with companywide business development goals, such as new logos, retention and expansion, or ensuring the success of M&A integration. Clearly defining roles and responsibilities across teams, while uniting them around shared outcomes, is fundamental to successfully executing a go-to-market strategy.
RevOps can play a key role in achieving this alignment by providing teams with the tools and insights they need to collaborate effectively. Reflecting on one of his first RevOps successes, Nik shares: “Our sales team can now open an opportunity and see everything that’s happened with a prospect they’re working with. Having all the inbound activity, event participation, and interactions in one place provides invaluable talking points for building relationships and nurturing the deal. Having worked in account management for five years, I know how important that whole-picture view is – not just for closing deals but for the entire sales cycle.”
Insights like these do more than streamline processes – they also foster buy-in from teams by demonstrating tangible improvements to workflows and outcomes. When teams see how RevOps enhances efficiency and supports their goals, alignment becomes more achievable.
Building a RevOps Function: Where to Start and What to Focus On
Having discussed the challenges of misaligned goals in RevOps, Nik emphasises that the first step in building a successful function is addressing inefficiencies in core operations. “Things will often be more misaligned than they appear, even if you believe they are functioning well,” he explains. For example, when Nik joined Mention Me, opportunity generation was managed on spreadsheets, with a time-to-action of three days, and little accountability for lead follow-up. This left plenty of time for competitors to engage with leads first, making it an immediate priority. “By implementing the relevant processes, everything became more seamless and efficient, and we saw almost instant results, with more opportunities being generated.”
A key takeaway from our discussion was the focus on processes over tools. Nik notes, “You don’t need to be dogmatic about the tools you use. Instead, focus on the cohesion of the underlying processes in which the tools are utilised, understand where each process occurs, and what happens downstream. Once you’ve identified these and the corresponding gaps, you need to look at which opportunities will bring the most ROI when fixed.”
In deciding which areas are best to focus on, Nik recommends asking key questions at every stage of the customer journey:
How do we acquire leads?
What happens to a lead once it’s in the system?
How do we turn it into a potential deal?
What happens across the deal cycle?
How do we close deals and manage onboarding?
How do we manage clients during their lifecycle?
How do we identify and address issues before they impact customers?
Understanding the interdependencies between these stages is crucial. For instance, onboarding clients faster enables you to deliver value more quickly, which in turn simplifies renewal conversations. While implementing an end-to-end perspective may require significant shifts in your business, Nik highlights that “when executed effectively, you will notice improvements after a few months. Reporting, identifying areas for improvement, and targeting efforts become part of the daily routine, rather than sporadic realisations.”
In turn, when hiring for a Head of RevOps, technical expertise is secondary to curiosity and a persistent focus on improvement. “The technical part isn’t the focus; anyone can learn it”, notes Nik. “Instead, the ideal candidate is a problem solver – someone who isn’t afraid to question why things are done a certain way and to challenge the status quo. They need to be comfortable asking difficult questions.” This role requires someone who is constantly looking to fix inefficiencies, uncover opportunities, and make things better. Importantly, they should have the independence to remain impartial across functions, ensuring that their recommendations are rooted in what’s best for the business as a whole. This combination of strategic thinking and operational execution is what sets apart effective RevOps leaders.
Conclusion
In providing a unified view of the customer journey – from marketing to sales to customer success – RevOps aligns teams, standardises processes, and integrates data-driven decision-making into daily operations. In today’s economic climate, where attitudes have shifted away from “growth at all costs”, investing in a RevOps function can provide you with a critical value creation lever, delivering insights that enhance both operational execution and strategic performance.
If you’d like to discuss how RevOps could improve your go-to-market performance, please contact us.