We’ve been talking a lot about Revenue Operations lately. We’ve explored how it’s evolved and reshaped go-to-market strategies, especially how sales, marketing, and customer success professionals find their way into RevOps roles.
But there’s one angle we haven’t discussed enough: the relationship-building core of this essential function. In this episode of Go To Market with Dr. Amy Cook, Keith Lutz, chief information officer and RevOps advisor, proves that at the center of any great RevOps engine is someone who understands systems and data and deeply understands people.
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With a background spanning strategic planning and frontline collaboration, Keith brings a rare blend of empathy and execution to his work. He’s built his career around helping teams align, communicate better, and drive sustainable revenue growth by balancing process guidelines while building trust across departments.
His ability to see the human side of operations makes Keith stand out. For him, RevOps relies on dashboards and KPIs, but it’s also about aligning revenue teams so they can move faster and smarter together.
Keith is the kind of leader who proves that relationships still matter—and may be the most underrated part of the RevOps equation.
Here are some highlights from that interview:
Amy: Based on your CIO perspective, how do you view revenue operations and work directly with different departments when going to market?
Keith: Long gone are the days when the CIO would dictate the technology roadmap for the entire organization. Historically, they were the tech experts, so the organization leaned on them to make the best decisions.
Now, with SaaS, you have a generation in the workforce who are tech-savvy, and they understand their business processes, the markets, and their customers. They are technologists in their own right. They come armed with the solutions in tool sets that they believe will drive value for their organization. If I were a CIO who came in and said, ‘You know, that’s great, but we’re going to do my things,’ I would never have alignment or partnership.
My reasoning for partnering with my stakeholders is, first, to acknowledge that I’m not the smartest person in the room regarding SaaS platforms or technology throughout the organization. I have a responsibility to govern technology across the organization and help people understand how technology comes together to enable the organization to be cross-functional. I take on that responsibility. But I also have to realize that as I’m aligning myself with RevOps personnel and with executives within the industry, they often have a better solution than what I can come up with. It’s my job to align with them, to partner with them, and to figure out how I can better enable the skills, technologies, processes, and everything they want to bring to the table.
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Amy: Since you have a tight partnership with RevOps, can you share a scenario where you need to collaborate? Who needs to sign off on things? Who are the decision-makers? How would you interact?
Keith: There’s a need, so it starts right there.
