Revenue Operations has evolved far beyond CRM administration. Today’s most effective RevOps leaders are strategic architects who drive predictable, repeatable growth. This conversation between Mike Sitter, Vice President of Revenue Operations at AssetWatch®, and Amy Osmond Cook, Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Officer at Fullcast, reveals the actionable strategies that separate tactical operators from true business partners.

With over two decades of experience spanning Fortune 500 telecom companies and high-growth SaaS startups, Mike shares the blueprint for building RevOps functions that create lasting enterprise value.

Start With Board-Level Alignment

Understand What Investors Actually Care About

Before building any process, strategic RevOps leaders must decode investor priorities. Mike takes an intentional approach: “I was very intentional as I was onboarding with AssetWatch to kind of start with the investors and start with the board, really understand what’s important to them and what they see from a company.”

Your first action: Schedule conversations with your CEO and CFO to answer one critical question: Is the primary driver top-line growth, bottom-line profitability, or a balance of both?

This clarity shapes every downstream decision. At AssetWatch, the answer is growth, which directs Mike’s attention toward pipeline conversion efficiency rather than expense discipline.

“Unless you really understand what the board expects of the company and what the company values the most over the next 12 to 18 months, it’s really hard to know that you’re focused on the right things and prioritizing the right projects.”

Translate Executive Goals Into Concrete Initiatives

Understanding priorities enables RevOps to solve pressing challenges. Mike describes how CEO needs shaped his project roadmap: “Right now in addition to growth, what we’re trying to accomplish is we want to be able to have fully auditable, readily accessible ARR and sales reporting.”

Your second action: Identify your CEO’s top three concerns for the next board meeting. Build your project priorities around solving those specific challenges.

Get Out of the Office and Into the Field

Walk the Customer Journey Yourself

While board alignment provides strategic direction, frontline experience reveals operational reality. Mike describes an unconventional onboarding approach that most RevOps leaders skip entirely.

“Within a couple of weeks, I started going on field service calls with our installation technicians and got to talk to folks at the customer level.”

This hands-on experience revealed the entire journey from signed statement of work to completed installation. Mike wanted to understand how processes actually work, not how they appear in documentation.

Your third action: Shadow your sales team, customer success team, or field service team for at least one full customer interaction this quarter. Document what works and what creates friction.

Build Processes That Disappear

Aim for Invisibility

The most effective RevOps teams share a counterintuitive trait: their best work goes completely unnoticed.

“The best work product that RevOps has are the things that people don’t even notice. And if it’s working well and people don’t think about it and things just happen, then you know that RevOps has done a really good job.”

Your fourth action: Audit your current processes. For each one, ask: Does this enable the revenue team or create administrative burden? Eliminate anything that exists for control rather than enablement.

Serve the Revenue Process, Not the Org Chart

The question of where RevOps should report generates endless debate. Mike offers a pragmatic perspective that cuts through the noise.

“As RevOps leaders, we’re really accountable to the revenue process itself and to the company and not to any one individual.”

Your fifth action: Build informal relationships with leaders across sales, marketing, customer success, and finance. Your effectiveness depends on cross-functional trust, not reporting lines.

Plan Nine Months Ahead

Balance Daily Execution With Long-Term Vision

Mike identifies the hidden superpower that separates effective RevOps leaders from tactical operators.

“One of the hidden superpowers of RevOps is the ability to balance the tactical day-to-day execution with the ability to look longer term.”

He illustrates this with sales capacity planning: “Most people in RevOps know that a sales rep that you hire today is probably not going to be productive until six to nine months from now. And so all that has to be built into the budget and the plan.”

Your sixth action: Block time this week to model your hiring needs for Q1 of next year. Work backward from revenue targets to determine when recruiting must begin.

Become a Strategic Advisor

The ultimate goal is moving from executor to thought partner.

“The more I can be a thought partner and an advisor to those folks and really keep my eye on what’s happening in nine months versus just what’s happening this week, I think that’s what separates really effective RevOps professionals from people who are really just focused on execution.”

Your seventh action: In your next leadership meeting, raise one forward-looking strategic question instead of reporting on past metrics. Ask about market saturation, competitive threats, or capacity constraints before they become urgent problems.

Your Next Step

The RevOps leaders who thrive will be those who balance daily execution with strategic foresight, anticipating challenges before they become crises. Start by aligning with board priorities, walking the customer journey yourself, and building processes that enable rather than constrain.

See how leading companies are preparing for the future in our 2026 Benchmarks Report.