This article is adapted from Ali’s appearance on RevOps Unboxed with Sandy Robinson. Listen to the full episode here.
Hi there, I’m Ali Spinelli, VP of Revenue Operations at PandaDoc. If you’re in RevOps – or thinking about getting into it – you’ve probably heard a lot about what RevOps “should” look like.
But what does it actually look like in the trenches?
Spoiler: It’s not all about shiny tools and big budgets. It’s about solving real problems. Let’s break it down. 👇
My accidental path into RevOps
I get asked a lot how I ended up in revenue operations. Honestly, it wasn’t something I’d planned or even knew existed when I first started out in my career. My journey started in business and legal affairs, then I moved into contract management, like a deal desk function.
As I navigated this role, I got closer and closer to the operational side of the business while still staying connected to the go-to-market world.
Then, I started getting opportunities looking for someone who could help scale their revenue organization. It all just organically happened. So, while I didn’t set out to be in RevOps, I found my skills aligned with what’s needed in this field.
One of my first roles was at a foreign currency trading platform, where I negotiated contracts with some serious players like Apple and major multinational banks.
Let me tell you, there were moments where I felt like a complete imposter, chatting with lawyers who knew more about contracts than I ever would.
But it taught me some things that I use every day in RevOps:
- How to listen actively
- How to put the pieces together to solve a problem
Building the RevOps engine at PandaDoc
I joined PandaDoc in December of 2024, and as I stepped into my role, one of the first things I did was observe and listen.
What does our data look like? What are our reporting and analytics like? What’s the state of our systems? How is our team structured?
This phase of learning was key.
I wasn’t looking to overhaul everything right away; I wanted to understand how we were doing things first. PandaDoc was already doing some great work, but as a company grows, revenue operations needs to evolve.
What RevOps looks like at a $10 million company is different from what it looks like at $100 million, and that’s something I really wanted to dig into.
From there, I realized that our organization needed more alignment – especially across marketing ops, sales ops, and customer success ops.
We needed to think about customer acquisition, retention, and the whole customer journey, not just the separate silos of each department.
That meant working to consolidate functions like marketing ops and sales ops under one leader and ensuring that each part of the revenue engine was working together smoothly.
A unified RevOps structure: What that actually looks like
Over the last few months, we’ve been creating a more cohesive structure for RevOps between marketing operations, sales operations, CX ops, and RevTech.
As companies grow, you need to evolve from thinking of these departments as isolated teams to thinking of them as part of the entire customer journey.
For example, we’ve brought marketing ops and sales ops under one leader to streamline customer acquisition. We don’t want silos between the two – sales and marketing should be on the same page, looking at the same data, and driving the same objectives.
This allows us to take a more holistic approach to the customer journey.
We also started centralizing our revenue insights and strategy, which includes forecasting, comp modeling, and analytics. This is key because it helps us align the revenue function with our data strategy, ensuring that we have a single source of truth for all revenue-related decisions.
Finally, we’re also creating centers of excellence within the organization. This means building up specialized expertise in certain areas like RevTech, forecasting, and analytics. It’s about creating a deeper level of understanding and skill in these areas as we scale.
Kun Li
RevTech as a strategic function, not just support
If you’ve worked in RevOps, you know that there’s always a big focus on tools – especially when it comes to Salesforce, CRM systems, and integrations. But let me tell you, it’s not just about being an admin. At PandaDoc, we’ve taken a strategic approach to RevTech.
It’s not about just managing Salesforce; it’s about looking at the bigger picture: how do these tools integrate with each other to provide insights that help drive revenue?
We’re moving away from what I’d call a “help desk” approach – where the RevTech team is just reacting to tickets and requests – and evolving into a more proactive, strategic function. This involves constantly looking for ways to optimize our systems, automate processes, and become a true business partner within the organization.
In my experience, the biggest mistake companies make is thinking that technology is a silver bullet. It’s not.
What you need to do first is identify the problems you’re trying to solve. From there, you can decide how technology fits in. It’s about the right processes, the right data, and the right tech.
Without that alignment, no tool will solve your problems.
The critical role of CX Ops (and why most companies overlook it)
I’ve seen firsthand how focusing only on customer acquisition and ignoring post-sale processes can be detrimental.
At PandaDoc, I was fortunate enough to have buy-in from the executive team on having a CX ops function. Why? Because customer success doesn’t end when the sale is made. It’s just the beginning. We need to think about retention, loyalty, and stickiness – things that aren’t just driven by marketing and sales. That’s where CX ops comes in.
When I worked at a previous company, we had a “leaky bucket” problem. Our customer acquisition efforts were strong, but we weren’t focused enough on keeping those customers happy and engaged.
Every customer would get five hours per month in support, and that made me think: “Well, that means we treat every customer the same”.
I'm a strong believer in treating every customer right, but if you're running a business, are you going to treat a customer who's bringing you a million dollars a year in annual revenue exactly the same as a customer who is bringing in $5,000 a year?
Folks tend to, historically, think about customer acquisition first and not pay attention to post-sale until there’s a problem, but this is shifting – which is fantastic.
The value of CX operations lies in having operational resources that are focused strategically and tactically across the customer journey, and proactively getting ahead of issues that might cause churn.
Building loyalty brings you more customers, because you have people that are happy and spread the word about the value that you bring to them to their peers and their friends.
CX ops is often overlooked, but I would argue it is just as significant of a priority for an organization, if not even more of a priority than customer acquisition. Some companies have a smaller customer base or specific verticals that they're selling into, and there's only so many customers that exist in that space.
There's a wealth of knowledge that you can glean from your customer base and bring to your product team, marketing team, and sales teams – so having operational resources focused on that is just critical.
Rebecca Stewart
Breaking silos through influence, not org charts
One of the most important things I’ve learned in RevOps is the power of influence. Whether you’re in a senior position or not, you can break down silos and drive change through relationships.
I’ve been fortunate to work with fantastic teams, but I’ve also seen the challenges that come with having different departments using different tools and working in isolation.
The key to overcoming this is building trust. You don’t need a fancy title to drive change; you just need to bring your authentic self to the table and understand the problems people are facing.
That’s where you can make a real impact. A big part of that is asking the right questions and genuinely listening to the answers.
Understand the challenges each team is facing, and then help solve them. When you take the time to build these relationships, it makes it easier to collaborate and drive change.
It's not like anyone chooses to operate in a silo, right? It's just what happens sometimes organically – and even though folks may be open to the change, it's still a change.
The future of RevOps: Evolving roles, not replacing people
As technology continues to advance, there’s a lot of talk about AI and automation replacing human jobs. I don’t believe that’s true. What I believe is happening is that technology is changing the roles we play. Take sales, for example. With the help of AI, sales reps can spend more time actually selling and less time on admin tasks like updating CRM systems.
The same goes for RevOps. We’re not going anywhere, but our roles are evolving. We’ll focus less on tactical tasks and more on high-value activities like strategy, process optimization, and using data to drive decision-making.
I think we’re going to see more roles like “go-to-market engineer” emerge, roles that focus on integrating technology, optimizing processes, and aligning teams.
These roles will become even more critical as organizations scale and technology becomes an even bigger part of the equation.
My words to anyone considering RevOps – enjoy the ride, because it's an exciting one, and it's one that I'm very glad I accidentally discovered!
This article is adapted from Ali’s appearance on RevOps Unboxed with Sandy Robinson. Listen to the full episode here.
