The Marketing Operations Leader

The Marketing Operations Leader

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The Marketing Operations Leader
The Marketing Operations Leader
Easy GTM Dashboard for Leaders & Operations

Easy GTM Dashboard for Leaders & Operations

Also - Top 7 Mistakes Marketing & Revenue Operators Make - and What to Do About It

Darrell Alfonso's avatar
Darrell Alfonso
May 13, 2025
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The Marketing Operations Leader
The Marketing Operations Leader
Easy GTM Dashboard for Leaders & Operations
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In this edition:

  1. Easy GTM Dashboard for Leaders & Operations

  2. Top 7 Mistakes Marketing & Revenue Operators Make - and What to Do About It

  3. POLL: What is the Hardest Part of Working in Marketing Today?

  4. Exclusive For Paid Subscribers: I Screwed Up My First Meeting With a New VP - What I Should Have Done and What You Can Do

  5. This Week! Learn from Marketing Ops Leaders at Amazon, Asana, Microsoft, Yext, and RingCentral at our free virtual event.


Easy GTM Dashboard for Leaders & Operations

GTM leaders need clear and accurate data to make smart decisions.

Here are the six essential reports that every GTM leader should use to align teams, accelerate revenue, and drive operational clarity (Big thanks to the Revlitix team and everyone who helped build this out!):

1️⃣ Executive Scorecard
This report gives a high-level snapshot of Marketing, Sales, Revenue, and Retention performance vs. goal. It helps identify what’s working, what’s behind, and where to focus.

2️⃣ Pipeline Forecast Chart
This report shows current value and future projections with confidence bands. Based on real pipeline data, it helps leaders plan ahead for hiring, budgeting, and goal-setting.

3️⃣ Marketing Bowtie Funnel
This report visualizes the full customer journey—from Lead to Expand. It helps spot funnel leaks, align cross-functional teams, and improve conversion rates across stages.

4️⃣ SDR Activity Report
This report tracks outreach volume, reply rates, and demos booked by the team. It helps you understand where top-of-funnel activity is converting or falling flat.

5️⃣ Trend: Demos to Deals
This report shows the relationship between demos and deals month over month. It helps you spot changes in conversion trends early and take action before they impact revenue.

6️⃣ Marketing Revenue by Source
This report shows which channels are actually driving revenue, not just leads. It helps guide budget decisions and double down on what’s truly working.
These reports help teams move faster, stay aligned, and make smarter, data-informed decisions.

What would you add or change? Which reports do you find most helpful?

This post is brought to you by my partners at Revlitix. The great news is that Revlitix helps automate and visualize all these reports in real time.

Check out Revlitix.


Top 7 Mistakes Marketing & Revenue Operators Make - and What to Do About It

After years in the trenches and countless conversations with enterprise ops leaders, these are the mistakes that come up repeatedly.

Here’s what to avoid—and what high-performing teams do instead:

1. Overcomplicating the Lead Lifecycle
Mistake: Designing overly complex lead lifecycles with too many stages, leading to confusion and inefficiency.
What to do instead: Simplify. Create clear, measurable stages that align to the buyer’s journey. Clarity drives better handoffs, tracking, and execution.

2. Operating Without a Strategic Roadmap
Mistake: Being reactive to every request without a clear annual plan leads to scattered efforts and burnout.
What to do instead: Build a strategic roadmap that aligns with company goals. Use it to guide priorities and evaluate what to take on—and what to push back.

3. Overemphasizing Attribution Metrics
Mistake: Getting overly focused on attribution models creates friction between teams and can distort decision-making.
What to do instead: Combine quantitative attribution with qualitative insights. Partner closely with Sales to map the full customer journey.

4. Being Technology-Led Instead of Strategy-Led
Mistake: Letting tools dictate your GTM strategy instead of the other way around.
What to do instead: Start with business objectives, then configure your tech to support them. Your stack should serve your strategy, not shape it.

5. Saying Yes to Everything
Mistake: Accepting every inbound request turns Ops into a ticket system.
What to do instead: Implement an intake process and scoring model. Prioritize by impact, not who asks the loudest.

6. Not Owning the Narrative
Mistake: Assuming your work speaks for itself.
What to do instead: Proactively share wins. Show how Ops drives revenue. Be the voice that connects execution to business outcomes.

7. Avoiding Leadership Moments
Mistake: Staying behind the scenes instead of stepping up.
What to do instead: Present to execs. Lead cross-functional projects. The best Ops leaders act like GMs—and are treated like them.


POLL: What’s the Hardest Part About Working in Marketing Today?

Top Commentary from Social

I read one of the options as 'staying ahead of friends' and I was like what the helll??? 😆 - Phil Gamache

This really depends on the organization. Buy-in can be easy in organizations that truly get the value of marketing. For those who are skeptical, buy-in is much more challenging. Staying ahead of trends, as they change so fast, is probably the one that's an "across the board" thing. - Anthony Gaenzle

Darrell, I'd say these are all symptoms of firm-wide misunderstanding of marketing - Anthony Vaillancourt

In a sense, and particularly at this stage of things, isn’t it “All of the Above”? - Mark Stouse

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