Title: Revenue Operations — LearnCoachAssist

Q: What is revenue operations?
A: Revenue operations, or RevOps, is the practice of aligning sales, marketing, and customer success around shared data, process, and revenue goals.

Q: Why does RevOps matter?
A: It reduces handoff friction, improves forecasting, and helps teams scale with less duplication and confusion.

Q: What problem does RevOps usually solve?
A: It addresses siloed teams, inconsistent process, poor reporting, and revenue leakage across the customer lifecycle.

Q: What is a revenue funnel?
A: A revenue funnel is the staged journey from lead to customer to renewal or expansion.

Q: Why are shared definitions important in RevOps?
A: Teams need the same meaning for terms like lead, opportunity, pipeline, and churn to make reporting trustworthy.

Q: What is lifecycle stage management?
A: It is the practice of tracking where prospects and customers are in the commercial journey and what should happen next.

Q: What is lead routing?
A: Lead routing is the process of sending new leads to the right owner or workflow based on rules such as territory or segment.

Q: Why do handoffs matter in RevOps?
A: Weak handoffs cause lost context, slower follow-up, and dropped revenue opportunities.

Q: What is territory design?
A: Territory design decides how accounts or prospects are divided across teams, regions, or reps.

Q: What is pipeline hygiene?
A: Pipeline hygiene is keeping CRM opportunities accurate, current, and free of stale or misleading data.

Q: Why is forecast accuracy important?
A: Better forecasts help leaders allocate budget, headcount, and expectations more responsibly.

Q: What is a source of truth in RevOps?
A: It is the trusted system or reporting layer where teams go for the official version of core revenue data.

Q: What is CRM governance?
A: CRM governance is the set of rules and ownership practices that keep customer data clean and usable.

Q: Why should automation be used carefully in RevOps?
A: Automation can save time, but poor automation can spread bad data or broken process faster.

Q: What is attribution in revenue operations?
A: Attribution is the method used to determine which channels or touches influenced pipeline or revenue outcomes.

Q: Why do RevOps teams care about conversion rates?
A: Conversion rates reveal where the funnel is working well and where prospects are leaking out.

Q: What is expansion revenue in RevOps?
A: Expansion revenue is additional revenue from current customers through upgrades, add-ons, or seat growth.

Q: What is churn analysis?
A: Churn analysis examines why customers leave or downgrade so teams can improve retention.

Q: Why are service-level agreements useful between GTM teams?
A: SLAs make response time, handoff quality, and ownership expectations explicit.

Q: What is enablement in a RevOps context?
A: Enablement is making sure frontline teams have the process, tools, messaging, and training needed to execute well.

Q: What is a dashboard in RevOps?
A: A dashboard is a focused view of key revenue metrics used to monitor performance and make decisions.

Q: Why should RevOps prioritize usability, not just reporting depth?
A: If dashboards and process are too complex, frontline teams stop trusting or using them.

Q: What is revenue leakage?
A: Revenue leakage is value lost through missed follow-up, process gaps, poor pricing control, or weak renewals.

Q: Why does RevOps need cross-functional credibility?
A: The work succeeds only when multiple teams trust the data and adopt the shared process.

Q: What is a useful RevOps question?
A: Where does misalignment cost us time, confidence, or revenue today?

Q: What is a durable RevOps habit?
A: Keep definitions clear, systems clean, and handoffs explicit so growth can scale without chaos.

Q: What is funnel velocity?
A: Funnel velocity is the speed at which prospects move through the pipeline toward revenue.

Q: Why should process changes be measured after rollout?
A: Without measurement, teams cannot tell whether the change improved outcomes or just added complexity.

Q: What is deal inspection?
A: Deal inspection is a structured review of pipeline opportunities to test quality, risk, and forecast realism.

Q: What is a strong RevOps principle?
A: Design process around clear ownership and trustworthy data, not around organizational politics.

Q: Why should customer success be part of RevOps?
A: Revenue is affected by retention and expansion, so post-sale execution belongs in the same operating picture.

Q: What is operational debt in revenue teams?
A: Operational debt is the hidden cost of messy systems, unclear stages, and manual workarounds that no longer scale.

Q: Why do RevOps teams care about handoff timestamps?
A: Timestamps reveal whether leads, opportunities, or renewals are being acted on fast enough to protect revenue.

Q: What is a funnel stage exit criterion?
A: It is the explicit condition that must be true before a deal or account moves to the next stage.

Q: Why should pipeline stages reflect reality, not optimism?
A: Artificially advanced deals make forecasts weaker and hide where execution is actually breaking down.

Q: What is a lead source taxonomy?
A: It is the agreed naming system for where leads came from so attribution stays consistent.

Q: Why should revenue data quality be owned clearly?
A: Shared responsibility often means no one fixes data problems before they spread into reporting and decisions.

Q: What is a renewal motion?
A: A renewal motion is the structured process for retaining customers at the point their contract or subscription is up for continuation.

Q: Why do revenue teams need cross-functional metrics?
A: Shared metrics encourage alignment across marketing, sales, and success instead of siloed local optimization.

Q: What is SLA compliance in RevOps?
A: SLA compliance measures whether teams are meeting the agreed standards for speed, quality, or follow-through.

Q: Why is segmentation useful in RevOps?
A: Segmentation helps teams tailor process and messaging based on customer size, industry, or lifecycle stage.

Q: What is a RevOps operating cadence?
A: It is the recurring rhythm of pipeline reviews, forecast reviews, dashboard checks, and process improvement meetings.

Q: What is a strong RevOps habit?
A: Measure the flow of work across the whole revenue journey, not just the local outputs of one team.

Q: Why should automation be audited periodically?
A: Automations that once helped can become a source of bad data or friction as the business evolves.

Q: What are the four functional pillars of a typical RevOps model?
A: Marketing operations, sales operations, customer success operations, and (in some models) finance or pricing operations — all coordinated around shared data and process.

Q: What is the difference between RevOps and traditional sales operations?
A: Sales operations focuses on a single GTM function; RevOps extends the same operating discipline across marketing, sales, and post-sale teams to remove end-to-end friction.

Q: Which executive typically owns RevOps?
A: Most often the CRO, COO, or a dedicated VP of Revenue Operations — though the sponsor matters more than the title.

Q: What is the goal of revenue operations in one sentence?
A: To make the end-to-end revenue engine predictable, efficient, and scalable by aligning people, process, data, and technology.

Q: What is the classic RevOps tech stack?
A: A CRM (e.g. Salesforce, HubSpot), a marketing automation or MAP, a customer success platform, a CPQ or billing system, a data warehouse, and a BI/reporting layer.

Q: What is an MQL?
A: An MQL (Marketing-Qualified Lead) is a lead that marketing has judged worth passing to sales based on fit and engagement criteria.

Q: What is an SQL?
A: An SQL (Sales-Qualified Lead) is a lead accepted by sales as worth active pursuit, often after a discovery conversation.

Q: What is the difference between an MQL and an SQL?
A: MQLs meet marketing's criteria and are passed to sales; SQLs have been accepted by sales as ready for active working.

Q: What is a PQL?
A: A PQL (Product-Qualified Lead) is a user who signals purchase intent through in-product behavior such as usage thresholds or feature adoption.

Q: What is an SAL?
A: An SAL (Sales-Accepted Lead) is an SQL renamed at the moment a rep formally accepts and begins working it.

Q: What is pipeline coverage?
A: Pipeline coverage is the ratio of open pipeline value to the remaining quota for a period; 3x coverage is a common rule of thumb.

Q: What is a healthy pipeline coverage ratio?
A: A commonly cited target is 3x to 4x open pipeline per dollar of remaining quota, though it varies by win rate and sales cycle length.

Q: What is win rate?
A: Win rate is the percentage of opportunities that close-won out of those closed (won or lost), usually measured over a defined period.

Q: What is a good B2B SaaS win rate benchmark?
A: Reported benchmarks vary widely; a commonly cited range for B2B SaaS is roughly 20–30%, with SMB higher and enterprise lower.

Q: What is average contract value (ACV)?
A: ACV is the average annualized revenue of a closed contract, calculated as total contract value divided by years.

Q: What is annual recurring revenue (ARR)?
A: ARR is the annualized value of recurring subscription contracts at a point in time, excluding one-time fees.

Q: What is monthly recurring revenue (MRR)?
A: MRR is the normalized monthly value of all active subscription contracts, including new, expansion, contraction, and churn components.

Q: What is gross revenue retention (GRR)?
A: GRR is the percentage of starting recurring revenue retained from existing customers, excluding upsell — capped at 100%.

Q: What is net revenue retention (NRR)?
A: NRR is the percentage of starting recurring revenue retained from existing customers including expansion, so it can exceed 100%.

Q: What is considered a strong NRR for SaaS?
A: Top-quartile B2B SaaS companies often report NRR of 110–120% or higher, indicating strong expansion relative to churn.

Q: What is the difference between GRR and NRR?
A: GRR measures retention alone (capped at 100%); NRR adds expansion revenue back in and can therefore exceed 100%.

Q: What is logo churn?
A: Logo churn is the percentage of customer accounts lost over a period, regardless of revenue size.

Q: What is revenue churn?
A: Revenue churn is the percentage of recurring revenue lost over a period, which differs from logo churn when customers vary in size.

Q: What is negative churn?
A: Negative churn occurs when expansion revenue from existing customers exceeds revenue lost to churn, so net MRR grows without new logos.

Q: What is CAC?
A: CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is total sales and marketing spend over a period divided by the number of new customers acquired in that period.

Q: What is CAC payback period?
A: CAC payback is the number of months of gross margin it takes to recover the cost of acquiring a typical customer; lower is better.

Q: What is LTV?
A: LTV (Customer Lifetime Value) is the total gross-margin revenue a customer is expected to generate over their lifetime.

Q: What is the LTV:CAC ratio?
A: LTV:CAC compares lifetime value to acquisition cost; ratios around 3:1 are commonly cited as healthy, below 1:1 as destructive.

Q: What is magic number in SaaS?
A: Magic number is net new ARR added in a period divided by the sales and marketing spend of the prior period; above ~0.75 typically justifies further S&M investment.

Q: What is a sales velocity formula?
A: Sales velocity = (Number of opportunities × Average deal size × Win rate) ÷ Sales cycle length — measured in revenue per day.

Q: How do you increase sales velocity?
A: Increase the number of opportunities, raise average deal size, raise win rate, or shorten the sales cycle — each lever has trade-offs.

Q: What is a sales cycle length?
A: Sales cycle length is the average time from first qualified opportunity to closed-won, often segmented by segment or product.

Q: What is the difference between sales cycle length and time to revenue?
A: Sales cycle length stops at closed-won; time to revenue includes onboarding, implementation, and billing before cash is actually collected.

Q: What is lead response time?
A: Lead response time is the elapsed time between a lead being created and a rep making first meaningful contact; under 5 minutes is often cited as ideal.

Q: What is a service-level agreement (SLA) in RevOps?
A: An SLA is a documented commitment between teams (e.g. marketing to sales, AE to SE, CS to customer) covering speed, quality, or outcomes.

Q: What is a typical marketing-to-sales SLA?
A: Marketing commits a defined number of MQLs meeting agreed criteria, and sales commits to follow up within a specified window (e.g. 24 business hours).

Q: What is a CS-owned SLA for at-risk accounts?
A: CS often commits to outreach within a defined window when usage or health scores drop below thresholds, before renewal risk escalates.

Q: What is lead scoring?
A: Lead scoring assigns numeric values to fit and engagement signals so leads can be prioritized and routed automatically.

Q: What are the two components of a typical lead score?
A: Explicit (firmographic fit such as industry or company size) and implicit (behavioral signals such as pricing-page visits or demo requests).

Q: What is lead grading?
A: Lead grading is the qualitative assessment of fit (company attributes), while lead scoring weights both fit and engagement.

Q: What is a lead-to-MQL conversion rate?
A: It is the percentage of raw leads that meet MQL criteria — used to judge marketing quality and ICP fit.

Q: What is an MQL-to-SQL conversion rate?
A: It is the percentage of MQLs accepted by sales as SQLs — used to judge marketing–sales alignment and qualification quality.

Q: What is an SQL-to-win conversion rate?
A: It is the percentage of SQLs that close as won deals — a core sales effectiveness metric.

Q: What is a sales accepted lead rate?
A: SAL rate is the percentage of MQLs that sales formally accepts, indicating whether marketing is delivering sales-ready demand.

Q: What is funnel drop-off analysis?
A: It is the practice of measuring conversion between each funnel stage to identify where the largest absolute or relative leakage occurs.

Q: What is the top-of-funnel (TOFU)?
A: TOFU is the awareness stage — broad outreach aimed at attracting attention and capturing leads.

Q: What is the middle-of-funnel (MOFU)?
A: MOFU is the consideration stage — educating prospects and qualifying them against use cases and requirements.

Q: What is the bottom-of-funnel (BOFU)?
A: BOFU is the decision stage — providing evaluation support, proofs, and pricing to convert prospects to customers.

Q: What is a BANT qualification framework?
A: BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) is a classical qualification checklist used to judge whether a deal is real and worth pursuing.

Q: What is MEDDIC?
A: MEDDIC is a qualification framework covering Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, and Champion.

Q: What is a champion in B2B sales?
A: A champion is an internal advocate at the prospect who believes in your solution and helps navigate the political buying process.

Q: What is an economic buyer?
A: The economic buyer is the person with final budget authority — the one whose approval actually unlocks the purchase.

Q: What is the difference between a coach and a champion?
A: A coach shares information informally but may not advocate publicly; a champion actively sells on your behalf inside the account.

Q: What is a multi-threaded opportunity?
A: An opportunity is multi-threaded when the seller has relationships with multiple stakeholders, reducing dependence on any single contact.

Q: Why is multi-threading important for forecast accuracy?
A: Single-threaded deals collapse when one contact leaves; multi-threaded deals are more resilient and more likely to slip predictably rather than vanish.

Q: What is deal stage slippage?
A: Slippage is the movement of an expected close date to a later period — a key signal of forecast risk and pipeline quality.

Q: What is commit in forecast language?
A: Commit is the set of deals a rep confidently expects to close in the period, often grouped into Best Case, Commit, and Omitted categories.

Q: What is the difference between Best Case and Commit?
A: Best Case includes stretch deals that may close; Commit is what the rep will be held accountable to — usually a tighter subset.

Q: What is pipeline coverage at the commit level?
A: Commit-level coverage compares pipeline marked Commit to the quota gap; ~3x is commonly cited, though it depends on stage-to-close conversion rates.

Q: What is a stage-to-close conversion rate?
A: It is the historical percentage of deals at a given stage that ultimately close-won, used to weight pipeline by stage.

Q: What is a weighted pipeline forecast?
A: A weighted forecast multiplies deal value by stage-to-close probability, then sums across the pipeline — more realistic than raw pipeline value.

Q: What is forecast category hygiene?
A: It is the discipline of assigning each opportunity a clear, consistent forecast category (Commit, Best Case, Omitted, etc.) at every call.

Q: What is a pipeline review meeting?
A: A pipeline review is a recurring meeting where managers inspect deal quality, stage movement, and slippage rather than just totals.

Q: What is a forecast call?
A: A forecast call is the periodic meeting (often weekly or monthly) where reps submit numbers and managers roll them up into an organization-wide forecast.

Q: What is the difference between a pipeline review and a forecast call?
A: A pipeline review inspects individual deal quality; a forecast call consolidates rep submissions into an organizational number.

Q: What is forecast accuracy?
A: Forecast accuracy measures how close the predicted number was to actuals; it is often expressed as 1 − |Forecast − Actual| / Actual.

Q: What is a forecast variance?
A: Variance is the gap between forecast and actual results — positive (over-forecast) and negative (under-forecast) both indicate process issues.

Q: What is a commit-versus-actual gap?
A: It is the difference between what was committed and what actually closed — a key coaching metric for individual reps and managers.

Q: What is a sales play?
A: A sales play is a repeatable, teachable pattern for winning a specific type of deal (e.g. displacing a competitor or selling into a new vertical).

Q: What is a repeatable sales motion?
A: A sales motion is the structured, repeatable way a team approaches a customer segment — e.g. self-serve PLG, sales-led, or field sales.

Q: What is product-led growth (PLG)?
A: PLG is a go-to-market motion where users adopt the product directly, often on a free or trial plan, before a sales conversation begins.

Q: What is sales-led growth (SLG)?
A: SLG is a motion where sales reps are the primary driver of conversion, typical in mid-market and enterprise B2B SaaS.

Q: What is the difference between PLG and SLG funnels?
A: PLG funnels rely on in-product usage to drive conversion; SLG funnels rely on outbound and inbound rep-led conversations.

Q: What is ICP?
A: ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is the explicit description of the company characteristics that correlate with high-value, low-churn customers.

Q: What is the difference between ICP and buyer persona?
A: ICP describes the company; a buyer persona describes the individual human roles and motivations inside that company.

Q: What is TAM, SAM, and SOM?
A: TAM is Total Addressable Market; SAM is the Serviceable portion you can target; SOM is the Serviceable Obtainable share you can realistically win.

Q: What is account scoring?
A: Account scoring rates fit and intent at the company level, often used for ABM prioritization rather than per-lead scoring.

Q: What is ABM?
A: ABM (Account-Based Marketing) is a strategy that concentrates marketing and sales effort on a defined set of high-value target accounts.

Q: What is the difference between ABM and traditional demand gen?
A: ABM treats named accounts as the unit of marketing; traditional demand gen treats leads as the unit.

Q: What is a tiered ABM model?
A: Tiered ABM groups target accounts into tiers (e.g. Strategic 1:1, Mid-market 1:few, Programmatic 1:many) with different plays per tier.

Q: What is a SDR?
A: An SDR (Sales Development Representative) focuses on outbound and inbound lead qualification to set meetings for account executives.

Q: What is an AE?
A: An AE (Account Executive) owns the full sales cycle from qualified opportunity to closed-won.

Q: What is an SE?
A: An SE (Sales Engineer or Solutions Consultant) provides technical expertise during evaluation, demos, and proof-of-value.

Q: What is a CSM?
A: A CSM (Customer Success Manager) owns post-sale adoption, retention, and expansion for a book of customers.

Q: What is a renewal specialist?
A: A renewal specialist (sometimes CS-owned, sometimes separate) owns contract renewal motion including pricing, terms, and timing.

Q: What is a revenue architect?
A: A revenue architect designs the end-to-end GTM motion — combining segmentation, motions, processes, and tech — usually as part of RevOps leadership.

Q: What is a buyer journey map?
A: A buyer journey map documents the steps, questions, and decision criteria a typical buyer goes through from awareness to purchase.

Q: What is a service blueprint?
A: A service blueprint maps front-stage customer interactions with back-stage internal processes to expose gaps and handoffs.

Q: What is process mapping in RevOps?
A: Process mapping documents each step of a revenue process, including owners, inputs, outputs, and SLAs.

Q: What is a RACI in RevOps?
A: RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) clarifies ownership of each step in a cross-functional revenue process.

Q: What is the difference between Accountable and Responsible in RACI?
A: Exactly one person is Accountable (the owner); multiple people can be Responsible (the doers).

Q: What is a swimlane diagram?
A: A swimlane diagram shows a process with each lane representing a team or system, making handoffs between lanes visible.

Q: What is a revenue waterfall?
A: A revenue waterfall decomposes a change in recurring revenue into New, Expansion, Contraction, and Churn components for a period.

Q: What is a cohort analysis?
A: A cohort analysis groups customers by a shared start date and tracks their retention or expansion behavior over time.

Q: What is a retention curve?
A: A retention curve plots the percentage of a cohort still active at each subsequent period, revealing churn patterns.

Q: What is a usage heatmap?
A: A usage heatmap visualizes feature adoption or login activity across customer segments to spot adoption gaps.

Q: What is a health score?
A: A health score combines product usage, support tickets, NPS, and other signals into a numeric indicator of customer risk or expansion potential.

Q: What are leading vs lagging indicators in RevOps?
A: Lagging indicators (revenue, churn) confirm outcomes; leading indicators (pipeline created, demo-to-close) predict them. Forecasts should rely on both.

Q: What is a leading indicator of revenue?
A: Pipeline created, qualified opportunities added, and demo-to-proposal conversion are leading indicators of future revenue.

Q: What is a leading indicator of churn?
A: Drop in product usage, decline in stakeholder engagement, and an uptick in support tickets are leading indicators of churn.

Q: What is reverse ETL?
A: Reverse ETL syncs modeled warehouse data back into operational systems (CRM, marketing tools) so frontline teams can act on it.

Q: What is data hygiene?
A: Data hygiene is the ongoing practice of keeping CRM and operational data complete, accurate, deduplicated, and up to date.

Q: What is duplicate record detection?
A: It is the practice of identifying and merging duplicate accounts, contacts, or opportunities that distort reporting and owner assignment.

Q: What is data normalization?
A: Data normalization standardizes formats (e.g. country codes, company names, job titles) so records can be reliably grouped and reported.

Q: What is a data steward?
A: A data steward is the named owner responsible for the quality, definitions, and usage rules of a specific data domain.

Q: What is a data dictionary?
A: A data dictionary documents the meaning, format, owner, and lineage of each field used in reporting.

Q: What is source-of-truth discipline?
A: It means each metric has one canonical place where it is computed and one named owner — preventing conflicting numbers across teams.

Q: What is metric definition governance?
A: It is the formal process for defining, versioning, and approving how key metrics are calculated across the company.

Q: What is a North Star metric?
A: A North Star metric is the single customer or value metric that best captures the core value the company delivers.

Q: What is a KPI tree?
A: A KPI tree decomposes a top-level outcome metric into the operational drivers that produce it, making trade-offs visible.

Q: What is a funnel efficiency ratio?
A: Funnel efficiency compares output (closed revenue) to input (raw leads or spend) — a higher ratio means the funnel converts more efficiently.

Q: What is pipeline velocity vs sales velocity?
A: Sales velocity measures overall revenue throughput; pipeline velocity is its narrower cousin focused on movement through stages.

Q: What is stage duration analysis?
A: Stage duration analysis measures average time opportunities spend in each pipeline stage, surfacing bottlenecks.

Q: What is stage aging?
A: Stage aging flags opportunities that have been in a stage longer than an agreed threshold, signalling possible stuck deals.

Q: What is a stuck deal?
A: A stuck deal is one that has not progressed in stage or activity for longer than the agreed threshold — a common deal inspection trigger.

Q: What is an upside deal?
A: An upside deal is one not yet in Commit but with potential to close this period if circumstances align.

Q: What is at-risk pipeline?
A: At-risk pipeline is open pipeline with red flags such as aging, missing champion, or unresolved blockers — usually excluded from Commit.

Q: What is pipeline integrity?
A: Pipeline integrity means every open opportunity reflects a real deal with a real person, a real need, and a real next step.

Q: What is sandbagging in forecasting?
A: Sandbagging is the deliberate understatement of forecast by reps to later beat the number and earn credit.

Q: What is stuffing in forecasting?
A: Stuffing is inflating the forecast or pipeline with weak or speculative deals to appear safer.