Mike Sitter has spent over 20 years proving that RevOps done right is nearly invisible, not because it’s unimportant, but because when it works, everyone else just moves faster. He’s built revenue operations across telecom, data centers, and SaaS, and recently made a deliberate bet on early-stage growth as VP of Revenue Operations at AssetWatch, a predictive maintenance platform for manufacturing plants.
In this conversation with Amy Cook, co-founder and CMO at Fullcast, and host of the Go-To-Market podcast, Mike shares the frameworks behind his approach: why he starts every new role by going to the field, how he earns alignment with the board before optimizing anything, and what separates RevOps leaders who drive strategy from those who simply execute it.
Here are interview highlights.
Amy: You have a 20-year career in RevOps that spans telecom, data centers, and now SaaS. How did it all start, and what drew you to early-stage work now?
Mike Sitter: I grew up in telecom, doing sales operations and sales process for a large public telco. Only the last seven of my 20-plus years have actually been in SaaS. That time in telecom gave me a deep appreciation for how mature, established organizations function and for how sales enablement weaves into the full revenue process. I really cut my teeth there.
Eventually I wanted something with more energy, more growth. So I worked my way through co-location and data centers before landing in SaaS, mostly at mid-to-late-stage companies. Those experiences gave me a real window into how companies think about potential events, and how a strong RevOps function connects the top of the funnel to enterprise value. Then I decided it was time to take all of that and apply it somewhere earlier-stage. AssetWatch is only two months in, but the building blocks are there, and the opportunity is real.
AC: What are the first principles you’re operating from as you build the revenue engine at AssetWatch in 2026?
MS: The starting point is always: why does RevOps exist? It exists to make the revenue engine run efficiently — to drive predictable, repeatable revenue. What it is not here to do is introduce process for process’s sake.
So one of the first things I did was get an outside-in perspective as early as possible. I was intentional about starting with the investors and the board, understanding what matters to them, how they see the company. And then I spent a lot of time in the field.
AssetWatch works with manufacturing plants on predictive maintenance, so within a couple of weeks I was going on field service calls with our installation technicians, talking to plant managers and reliability engineers.
I wanted to understand how we get from a signed statement of work to a completed install and make sure whatever we build from a RevOps perspective preserves everything that’s already working well.
AC: You mentioned starting with the board. How do you think about building that relationship strategically — especially as RevOps leaders try to grow their careers?
MS: For me it comes down to building alignment early, not just with the CRO, but with the CFO, CEO, and COO if the company has one at that level.
You have to understand how the company values itself: is growth the primary driver? Profitability? A balance of the two? That context shapes everything about where you invest your time and attention.
At AssetWatch, we’re in a stage where we have a real opportunity to capture market. So the primary driver is growth, which directs our attention to how we generate pipeline, how marketing and sales work together across channels, and how we get as efficient as possible at converting that pipeline into closed deals. Without that strategic orientation from the board, you genuinely don’t know if you’re focused on the right things.
Right now, a lot of our short-term priorities are around financial reporting and standing up a deal desk — making sure the board and investors have full confidence that we’re measuring and managing the business correctly. Because ultimately, the CEO has to stand up in front of the board every quarter. My job is to make sure he has what he needs when he does.
AC: Where is revenue operations best positioned in a company’s org chart? Who should RevOps report to?
MS: My take is that the reporting structure matters less than the relationships you build around it. I report to the CRO at AssetWatch, but our Chief Customer Officer owns a significant piece of the revenue cycle.
Early in the interview process, he asked me directly: how can he be sure I won’t over-prioritize the sales side? My answer was that as RevOps leaders, we’re accountable to the revenue process and to the company and not to any one individual. That’s why I’ve been intentional about building an open relationship with the CFO too, and having transparent conversations with my boss about the things I’m doing that may not directly benefit his team but serve the company’s longer-term goals.
That said, if a company is planning a near-term event like an acquisition or an IPO, a CFO reporting relationship for RevOps is really valuable. The diligence process leans heavily on RevOps and being tightly connected to finance gives you the context to understand why every number matters.
AC: Last question: how do you stay at the top of your game as a RevOps leader? What does that look like in practice?
MS: One of the hidden superpowers of RevOps is the ability to balance day-to-day execution with a longer lens. And what I’ve always tried to do, though not always successfully, is think about next year right now, in the middle of the current year. Hiring plans, capacity planning, pipeline targets: how do we set ourselves up so we’re not flat-footed when January arrives?
The alignment with senior leadership becomes even more important here. I’ve seen cases where we get to the end of a year and realize we don’t have the sales headcount we need to hit next year’s number because nobody accounted for the fact that a rep hired today won’t be fully productive for six to nine months. That has to be in the budget. It has to be in the plan.
The more I can be a genuine thought partner to our senior sales leaders by understanding what they’re seeing in the market, what signals they’re watching, the more I can separate what effective RevOps actually looks like from just responding to requests and executing tasks.
