I was on a call last month with a VP of Sales who told me, "We've got RevOps figured out. We hired a RevOps manager eight months ago." I asked a few follow-up questions. Does your RevOps function have a seat in strategic planning conversations? "Not really, they mostly handle Salesforce requests." Do they own a cross-functional operating cadence? "They sit in on the sales forecast call." Is there a defined RevOps roadmap with measurable outcomes? Silence.
This company doesn't have RevOps figured out. They have someone with a RevOps title doing systems administration and ad-hoc reporting. And there's nothing wrong with that as a starting point, but calling it "figured out" is like saying you have a finance function because someone does the bookkeeping.
There's a massive gap between having a RevOps person and having a mature RevOps organization. I've worked with companies at every point on that spectrum, from pre-revenue startups to publicly traded enterprises. What I've learned is that RevOps maturity isn't binary. It's a progression. And understanding where you sit on that progression is the first step toward getting where you need to be.
Why Maturity Matters More Than Headcount
Before I walk through the model, let me address the most common misconception: RevOps maturity is not about team size. I've seen three-person RevOps teams operating at a higher maturity level than fifteen-person teams at larger organizations. Maturity is about how RevOps operates within your business: its scope of influence, the sophistication of its processes, and its ability to drive strategic outcomes rather than just react to requests.
A mature RevOps function doesn't just keep the lights on. It actively shapes how the company goes to market, allocates resources, and makes decisions. If you want to understand why this distinction matters so much at the leadership level, I wrote about the common executive blind spots in What the C-Suite Gets Wrong About RevOps.
Here's the five-level model I use when assessing organizations. Be honest with yourself about where you land.
Level 1: Reactive / Ad Hoc
What it looks like: There's no dedicated RevOps function. Sales ops, marketing ops, and CS ops either don't exist or are handled part-time by someone whose actual job is something else. The CRM is a mess. Reporting is done in spreadsheets. When something breaks, someone scrambles to fix it. When leadership wants a report, it takes a week to pull together and nobody trusts the numbers anyway.
Assessment criteria:
- No dedicated RevOps or ops headcount
- CRM is a data entry tool, not a decision-making platform
- Processes are tribal knowledge, living in people's heads
- Reporting is reactive: "Can someone pull the Q3 numbers?"
- Tools are purchased without a stack strategy
- Each department manages its own tech with zero coordination
What it costs you: Everything is slow, everything is manual, and every decision is based on gut feel or anecdote. You can't answer basic questions like "what's our real pipeline-to-close ratio by segment?" without a multi-day research project. You're leaving revenue on the table and you don't even know how much.
How companies get stuck here: Usually it's a growth-stage company that's been so focused on product and initial sales traction that operations fell to the bottom of the priority list. The pain becomes acute somewhere between 30 and 80 employees, when the duct tape starts visibly failing.
Level 2: Emerging
What it looks like: You've hired someone with "RevOps" or "Sales Ops" in their title. They're keeping the CRM running, building reports, managing tools, and fulfilling requests from sales and marketing leadership. But they're an order-taker, executing what they're told without much input into what should be done or why. They sit inside a functional team (usually reporting to Sales), not as an independent function.
Assessment criteria:
- 1-2 dedicated ops people, usually embedded in Sales
- CRM is maintained but not strategically governed
- Basic dashboards exist but aren't consistently trusted
- Processes are documented for some workflows, not others
- Tool purchases still happen without centralized evaluation
- RevOps is measured on ticket completion, not business outcomes
- Cross-functional coordination is minimal; marketing and CS run their own playbooks
What it costs you: You have the appearance of operational rigor without the substance. Your ops person is drowning in requests and can't get ahead of the work. They're spending 80% of their time on reactive tasks and 20% on anything resembling strategic work. When I talk about the different branches of revenue operations and how they need to work together, this is the stage where that integration is most critically absent. For a deeper look at what a truly integrated RevOps function covers, check out RevOps Decoded: Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, and Business Systems.
What it takes to level up: The single biggest shift from Level 2 to Level 3 is organizational. RevOps needs to stop being a service desk inside Sales and start being a cross-functional capability with its own mandate. That means reporting structure changes, defined ownership of processes and systems, and a shift from "build what they ask for" to "recommend what we should build."
Level 3: Established
What it looks like: RevOps exists as a defined function with clear ownership of systems, processes, and data across the revenue org. There are documented processes for key workflows. Reporting is standardized and mostly trusted. There's a regular operating cadence: pipeline reviews, forecast calls, funnel analysis. RevOps has some influence on decisions, but it's still primarily seen as an enablement and efficiency function rather than a strategic one.
Assessment criteria:
- Dedicated RevOps team (3+ people) or structured function with clear scope
- Cross-functional coverage: sales ops, marketing ops, CS ops are coordinated
- Defined data governance, with rules about who can create fields, modify workflows, and add tools
- Standardized reporting with regular review cadences
- Tech stack is inventoried and there's a loose rationalization strategy
- RevOps owns process design for lead-to-close (and possibly renewal)
- Defined RevOps metrics and KPIs that are reviewed regularly
- Some proactive optimization, but most work is still request-driven
What it costs you: You're running a solid operation, but you're still mostly looking in the rearview mirror. Your reporting tells you what happened, not what's going to happen. You're optimizing individual processes without necessarily understanding how they connect across the full customer lifecycle. Strategic decisions are still made by functional leaders using RevOps data, rather than RevOps being at the table shaping those decisions.
What it takes to level up: This is the hardest transition in the model. Going from Level 3 to Level 4 requires a fundamental shift in how leadership views RevOps. It's not enough to have good processes and reliable data. RevOps needs to be in the room when GTM strategy is being shaped. That means the RevOps leader needs business acumen, not just technical chops. And leadership needs to be willing to give RevOps a strategic seat, not just an operational one. Understanding how to structure a RevOps team for strategic impact is critical at this stage.
Level 4: Advanced
What it looks like: RevOps has a strategic seat at the table. The RevOps leader is in the room for planning, resource allocation, and GTM strategy discussions, not just to present dashboards but to shape decisions. The team is proactive: they identify opportunities and risks before leadership asks. Data is a strategic asset, not just a reporting input. There's a formal RevOps roadmap with initiatives tied to business outcomes, not just system improvements.
Assessment criteria:
- RevOps leader reports to CRO/CEO or has direct access to executive team
- Forward-looking analytics: pipeline projections, capacity modeling, scenario planning
- Formal planning partnership: RevOps co-owns annual planning, territory design, compensation modeling, and GTM strategy
- Integrated tech stack with clear data flows and documented architecture
- Proactive optimization cycle: RevOps identifies bottlenecks and proposes solutions without being asked
- Change management capability: RevOps doesn't just build things, they drive adoption
- Team includes both strategic and tactical roles: analysts, architects, and operators
- Revenue impact is measurable: "This initiative increased win rates by X%" or "This process change reduced cycle time by Y days"
What it costs you: Honestly? Not that much. Level 4 is where most companies should be aiming. The gap between Level 4 and Level 5 is real, but the ROI on that incremental maturity depends heavily on your company's scale and complexity. For most companies between $20M and $500M in revenue, Level 4 is the sweet spot.
What it takes to level up: Level 5 requires significant investment in predictive capabilities, automation infrastructure, and organizational commitment to being truly data-driven. It also requires a level of data maturity (clean, complete, trustworthy data across every system) that most organizations haven't achieved yet.
Level 5: World-Class
What it looks like: RevOps is a genuine competitive advantage. The GTM motion is instrumented end-to-end with real-time data flowing across every customer touchpoint. Predictive models inform resource allocation, territory design, and investment decisions. Automation handles the operational complexity so the team can focus on strategic work. Every GTM decision, from hiring a new rep to launching a new segment, is modeled, measured, and optimized based on data.
Assessment criteria:
- Predictive and prescriptive analytics: not just "what happened" but "what should we do"
- Real-time operational visibility across the full revenue lifecycle
- Automated workflows handle 80%+ of routine operational tasks
- AI/ML models support forecasting, scoring, routing, and capacity planning
- RevOps is a strategic function with P&L-level influence
- Continuous optimization loop: test, measure, iterate at speed
- Fully integrated data model across CRM, marketing, CS, billing, and product
- RevOps innovations are exported as competitive advantages (faster response times, more accurate forecasting, superior customer experience)
The reality check: Very few companies are truly at Level 5. I'm talking about the top 1-2% of revenue organizations. If you think you're here and you're under $500M in revenue, you're probably at Level 4 with a few Level 5 capabilities. And that's fine. The goal isn't to check a box; it's to continuously improve.
How to Use This Model
Here's my practical advice for applying this framework.
Step 1: Be brutally honest about where you are. The most common mistake I see is self-assessment inflation. Companies at Level 2 think they're at Level 3 because they have dashboards. Companies at Level 3 think they're at Level 4 because their RevOps leader is "strategic." If your RevOps team is still primarily reactive, responding to requests rather than proactively identifying opportunities, you're not at Level 4. Regardless of what the org chart says.
Step 2: Focus on the next level, not the end state. Jumping from Level 2 to Level 4 doesn't work. Each level builds foundational capabilities that the next level depends on. You can't do predictive analytics (Level 5) if your data governance is immature (Level 3). You can't have strategic RevOps leadership (Level 4) if you haven't established cross-functional processes (Level 3).
Step 3: Invest in the transition points. The transitions between levels require specific investments:
- Level 1 to 2: Hire your first ops person. Get the CRM under control. Build basic reporting.
- Level 2 to 3: Restructure RevOps as a cross-functional team. Implement data governance. Build an operating cadence. Document everything.
- Level 3 to 4: Elevate RevOps leadership to a strategic role. Invest in analytics capabilities. Build a capacity planning model. Develop a RevOps roadmap tied to business outcomes, not system tickets.
- Level 4 to 5: Invest in predictive modeling, automation infrastructure, and advanced data architecture. This is where AI and ML start providing real value, but only if the foundation is solid.
Step 4: Align expectations with reality. If you're at Level 2, don't expect Level 4 outcomes. If your CEO wants predictive forecasting but your CRM data is 60% incomplete, the answer isn't a forecasting tool. It's data governance. Meet your organization where it is and build from there.
When Outside Help Makes Sense
I'll be direct: most companies between Level 1 and Level 3 don't have the internal expertise to drive the maturity transition on their own. Your first RevOps hire is probably strong tactically but may not have the experience to architect the organizational and process changes needed to reach the next level. That's not a knock on them. It's simply a recognition that building a mature RevOps function is a different skill set than operating within one.
This is exactly where fractional RevOps leadership creates disproportionate value. You get the strategic experience of someone who's built RevOps functions at multiple companies, without the cost or commitment of a full-time executive hire. They can assess where you are, design the roadmap to the next level, and either lead the execution or coach your team to do it.
The companies that progress fastest are the ones that are honest about their current state, intentional about where they want to go, and willing to invest in the transition, whether that's headcount, tooling, process change, or outside expertise.
Where does your organization stand? More importantly, what are you going to do about it?