RevOps Is Dead. What the F**K?

“What if RevOps is dead.” That was said by some guy commenting on it in a LinkedIn post I was mentioned in. As one of the speakers in that session for that post, it caught my attention, and I was like, What the f**k? Of course, this guy was the CEO of one of the gagillion new shiny AI tools for RevOps; great way to piss-off your ICP buddy!

The original post was about RevOps leadership and AI in RevOps, and this guy, a CEO of some sort of AI tool, just drops it: RevOps is dead. A valued RevOps friend, whose post this was, and one of the other speakers on this panel, responded with, “It’s so dead, is alive.”

The funny thing is, it made me think about when internet evolved to Web 2.0 and everyone said sales was going to die, or more recently as the evolution of AI, ChatGPT and others, there’s speculation that the SDR role would die.

“Is there even going to be an SDR role anymore?”
“SDRs, you’re going to be out of jobs.”
“Sales, you’ll be out of a job.”

The truth is, Sales has certainly evolved and so has the SDR role. According to one article, “As AI takes on more routine tasks, SDRs will need to adapt and upskill themselves. There is a greater focus on relationship-building, and staying in touch with new trends in the industry. As AI continues to evolve, so too will the SDR role” (Singh, 2024, para. 15).

And the way I see it is, it’s ALL evolving. Revenue Operations is evolving like the SDR role is evolving, just like sales is evolving. Evolve, or stagnate and die. How we use AI is based on the company’s culture, the willingness of leadership to learn and grow, and to do things differently. Don’t just do the same old crap! Period.

Here’s the Deal

Educate yourself. Attend webinars. Read. Experiment. Go to conferences. Do anything you can to educate yourself. Get your hands dirty. Try things differently. Try, fail, try again, and figure it out!

I find that it’s important to be intentional. For people like me who’ve been doing this a long time, it’s important not to rely on the same old habits and ways we’ve always done things.  For example, I may have done things a certain way in EVERY prior organization I’ve worked at, but I have to INTENTIONALLY consider something different.

Please, do yourself a favor, stop and explore more efficient options within your CRM or outside of it. In just a matter of months, there are new features, new functions, and new tools available. And by the time this article posts, there will be newer information available. We all need to ask questions. We need to bring in the right consultants, the right partners, make the right hires. We need to dive into the weeds and figure it out ourselves. It’s time to get scrappy people, don’t just sit and direct traffic, drive the freakin’ car!

To Say RevOps is Dead is Clickbait

So, to say RevOps is dead is clickbait. This guy just wants attention. But let’s be real; some people out there might be thinking this way.

According to a recent study by Carabiner Group (2025), organizations are still invested heavily in RevOps:

• • Early investment in RevOps teams correlates with higher growth
  • More mature, centralized RevOps teams correlate with higher growth
  • Managing data quality remains one of the top issues at SaaS companies
    

Revenue Operations is designed to help companies scale, grow, become more efficient and ultimately drive revenue. If there’s not a solid process, if there’s not a solid foundation of data, any so-called RevOps replacement will fail. Thinking about not having RevOps is like not having leadership. It’s like not having a head of IT. The names may evolve or change and the people doing it may gain different skill sets. But the message is still valid.

As a RevOps leader, if I don’t figure out the best way to leverage new technology, AI, and understand that AI is not just ChatGPT; my job will be dead. I’ll be replaced by another RevOps leader who has learned to leverage technology. Let’s make the value of RevOps 5x or 10x what it is today, and more than justify a seat at the table, make the role the most critical one at the company.

The only way is to lead and challenge the status quo. I challenge you. Don’t just do things the way you’ve always done them! I recently implemented a new instance of Salesforce after working in HubSpot, I hadn’t looked at Salesforce in about two years (but I’ve been a long-time Salesforce user/admin). Talk about change! Transformed! Not only has Salesforce changed all the names of its tools, but AI is everywhere. Agent Force is not a force to be reckoned with! 

I have to ask myself questions like, How can I use automation to build workflows or implement better admin tasks? How can AI help automate data research? How can AI help me make inferences on deals and better forecasting? But guess what, if I don’t figure it out, hire the best partner, learn the NEW best practices, I’ll be cooked!

Let’s be honest about the challenges. In the same research (Carabiner Group, 2025), they found that revenue operations leaders struggle in five main areas:

• • Budgeting
  • The economy
  • Bandwidth
  • Hiring
  • Lack of resources
    

So, to leverage AI, as RevOps leaders, we still have to fight for budget, resources, and bandwidth; nothing has changed there other than how those resources are deployed. In my experience, this has always been a challenge in RevOps, and the research backs that up. To become educated and deploy an AI strategy, to evolve, to scale; these foundational things don’t change.

Automate. Scale. Optimize.

More research reveals that scaling, efficiency and automation is where RevOps leaders in SaaS companies are focusing. According to the Carabiner Group (2025), top priorities in RevOps are:

• • Automation
  • Hitting target efficiency
  • Optimizing
  • Scaling
  • Hiring
    

So listen up, people, focus on automation! Forcing reps to fill out fields in the CRM should be a thing of the past; that’s where RevOps can leverage technology and show value. How much time can you give back to your teams? But you can’t do these things without a solid foundation, which in RevOps is all about your data, process, and how all the folks in your organization interact. Based on the Carabiner Group survey data, having a foundation of clean data, a solid knowledge base, and all your tools working together will make deploying any agent, automation, or workflow so much simpler (Carabiner Group, 2025).

Newsflash, when you go to set up any tool related to AI or technology in general, it’s got to get the information from somewhere. So if your room isn’t clean? It’s just going to spit back the same garbage to you. It’s like those sales rep “clean your room” dashboards in Salesforce. RevOps people, clean your room! Get your sh*t together. Figure out your AI strategy cross-functionally. 

Do I think RevOps is Dead? F-No!

So, no, I don’t think RevOps is dead. I believe companies will have the same problems they’ve always had. Companies will rename RevOps to whatever Forbes says is cool this year. A couple of years ago, it was RevOps, remember the article? “Revenue Operations Is The Fastest Growing Job In America” (Diorio, 2023, para. 1). So, just two years ago, RevOps was the hot thing; now it’s not? Maybe companies will just add “AI” to the end of it – VP of RevOps AI. Sounds cool. Who knows but RevOps has been around since before CRMs; it just didn’t have a name, and the work was done by multiple individuals in organizations without a strategy. Customer Success was the job of AEs who were responsible for the entire book of business (prospecting and renewals) only 10 or so years ago, and AEs did their own prospecting. When that Forbes article came out about RevOps being the fastest growing job, I remember looking on LinkedIn, and many of the jobs were “SalesOps” jobs companies ended up relabeling, and CSOs became CROs (that’s another article topic).  Also, let’s not forget that the economy was much better than it is today in 2023. But we won’t go there.

Let’s not kid ourselves, if you are in RevOps, your job will be dead if you don’t adapt, evolve, and learn how to best leverage AI, Automation, and NEW technology. You need to leverage the resources you have and fight for the ones you don’t! If you don’t evolve, you will be putting that dreaded green “Open to Work” badge on your LinkedIn profile. So take it upon yourself, and get to work!

Let’s be real. RevOps is not dead. And that click-bait guy has nothing better to do than try to piss off RevOps people everywhere. “RevOps is very much alive”, as said by my good friend Matt Volm, CEO of the RevOps Co-Op.

 

References

Carabiner Group. (2025). Data-driven revenue operations demystified: Empower sales & customer success teams to win customers and drive growth. Carabiner Group. Retrieved May 18, 2025, from https://carabinergroup.com/resources/

Diorio, S. (2023, March 20). Revenue operations is the fastest growing job in America. So what is revenue operations? Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephendiorio/2023/03/20/revenue-operations-is-the-fastest-growing-job-in-america-so-what-is-revenue-operations/

Singh, A. P. (2024, August 20). How AI is transforming the role of SDRs in 2024? Revrag.ai. https://www.revrag.ai/resources/how-ai-is-transforming-the-role-of-sdrs-in-2024