When should I hire a head of RevOps?

Hire at $10M ARR (or when you miss forecast 2 quarters in a row by >10%). Payoff: forecast accuracy improves 5–8%, sales efficiency lifts 3–5% within 6 months. Cost: $150–220K all-in. ROI: $500K–2M in incremental ARR + upside accuracy.

Signals it's time:

1. Forecast misses >15% two quarters in a row. You're making bad investment decisions. Head of RevOps builds waterfall, cleans data, sets up predictive models.

1. Your CRM has 40+ custom fields and nobody knows what they do. Sales team trusts their gut over data. RevOps simplifies and enforces standards.

1. You spend >4 hours/week on ad-hoc reports. "Can you send me deals by stage by region by product?" RevOps builds a self-service dashboard.

1. Sales and marketing disagree on pipeline health every month. Each team has a different number (one uses CRM, one uses HubSpot, one uses a spreadsheet). RevOps becomes source of truth.

1. Hiring has slowed down relative to ARR growth. You're at $10M+ but sales rep productivity is dropping. RevOps diagnoses whether it's territory design, quota fairness, or process friction.

1. You're starting to think about expansion / retention seriously. Can't run a cohort model or track NRR without RevOps infrastructure.

What a Head of RevOps actually does (day 1):

• First 30 days: Audit sales processes. Ride a rep, shadow a forecast call, review Salesforce field mapping. Document current state.
• Days 30–60: Rebuild Salesforce architecture (simplify custom fields, automate workflows, add validation rules so bad data is harder to enter).
• Days 60–90: Launch three dashboards: pipeline waterfall (by rep, by stage, by close month), forecast accuracy (actual vs. predicted), and sales metrics (win rate, CAC, payback).
• Months 4–6: Enforce CRM hygiene, identify top 3 rep productivity gaps, propose compensation structure changes (if needed).

Day 1 cost vs ROI:

Red flags: DON'T hire yet if:

• You don't have a Sales VP or Director overseeing the person (RevOps reports to VP of Sales, never to the CFO or Ops. If you don't have a Sales VP, hire that first).
• Your forecast is consistently ±5–7% (it's already good; RevOps adds marginal value).
• You're hiring for the first time, have <30 reps, or are in extreme growth mode. Wait until you stabilize.
• You don't have a modern CRM (not Salesforce, something janky). Fix your CRM first; RevOps will be frustrated.

How to hire:

• Profile: 5+ years in SaaS RevOps or sales operations. Has built a sales dashboard, cleaned a CRM, run a forecast model, worked with Salesforce. Former AE or CSM + operations background is gold (understands sales problems).
• Avoid: PhDs in statistics or "analytics people" who've never lived in sales. They'll want to build a perfect system in 18 months; you need results in 6.
• Compensation: $150K base + $20K bonus (tied to forecast accuracy). Top-tier hire in HCOL area: $220K all-in.

Ramp for Head of RevOps:

• Month 1: Learn current state (don't change anything).
• Months 2–3: Propose 3 changes (CRM fix, dashboard build, forecast process improvement).
• Months 4–6: Execute those changes + measure impact.
• By month 9, you should see: forecast accuracy improving, reps trusting data more, 1–2 process changes that stick.

Action: If you're at $8–12M ARR and forecast accuracy is <85%, start recruiting now. 90-day hiring cycle means you'll have someone in place at month 4 (when you really need them, post-growth hiring).

TAGS: revops, head-of-revops, hiring, sales-operations, forecast-accuracy