SaaStr 648: CRO Confidential: Cherishma Shah, Senior Vice President; Go To Market Strategy, Operations & Enablement at Guild Education

56 min • 5 april 2023

Not every leader is created equally. A bad experience with a revenue operations leader might taint your view of the position at all future companies, but that would be a mistake, as CRO Confidential podcast host Sam Blond learned first-hand.

In this week’s CRO Confidential episode, Blond talks to one of the best revenue operations leaders on the planet, Cherishma Shah, where she shares insights into the Rev Ops role, why your startup might need one, and how to maximize impact with this powerhouse position.

Shah is the Senior Vice President of Go-To-Market Strategy, Operations, and Enablement at Guild Education and formerly held the same role at Brex, working alongside Blond.

1:40 Intro

2:57 How Rev Ops fills critical gaps in the sales org

4:35 Cherishma's background, how that led to Rev Ops, and what a great Rev Ops candidate looks like

8:45 How to define Rev Ops

12:43 When is the right time to hire dedicated Rev Ops

20:47 More on the ideal candidate profile

24:11 Mistakes Cherisma has seen startups make as they make the first Rev Ops hires or build out the function

28:26 Where should Rev Ops sit within the org

35:07 Biggest opportunities for impact on the business for first hires

38:33 Scaling the Rev Ops org

40:35 How to structure the Rev Ops team and how to measure impact

47:00 Tactical examples of success Cherishma and Sam have seen