Stop Guessing Your Funnel: Build a Revenue Factory Instead
Welcome to The RevOps Leader, where every week, we listen to dozens of ReVOps podcasts and extract the top actionable ideas. (For more context on these ideas, give the podcasts a listen)
In this issue:
How Webflow and Zapier are making RevOps strategic in 2026
How UserGems achieved 33% higher win rates by "manufacturing" dark social conversations
Is your revenue funnel a black box? Build a “revenue factory”: Kyle Norton's framework for scaling from $2M to $50M ARR
1. How Webflow and Zapier are making RevOps strategic in 2026
Webinar: How RevOps leaders are building 2026 plans around AI with Tara Murray from Webflow and Lindsay Rothlisberger from Zapier (12/8/25)
TLDR:
Before starting any project, ask yourself 'What would my board slide say?' to filter out low-impact work and focus on outcomes that matter.
Webflow created an internal 'Go-to-Market AI Council' to let teams build freely while identifying patterns and avoiding duplicated effort.
Rather than splitting existing team members' time, Webflow hired dedicated 'go-to-market engineers' to focus 100% on AI initiatives.
The mindset shift that changes everything
Murray shared a mantra she got from Webflow's CRO that she now uses constantly with her team: "Ask yourself what you want your board slide to say." This question forces a shift from incremental improvements (like better lead scoring) to outcome-focused thinking (like pipeline generated). When a team member proposes a project, they now ask whether it's a 10x play or a 2x play – and if it's neither, whether it should happen at all.
Taming AI chaos without killing innovation
When AI tools exploded across the organization, Murray's instinct as an ops person was to control everything. Instead, she took the opposite approach and created a "Go-to-Market AI Council." The council brings together people building AI solutions across departments to share what they're working on, spot overlaps, and identify patterns. This surfaced insights like "everyone needs account research automation" which became a centralized investment, while other experiments remained distributed.
The 50% time trap and how to escape it
Both leaders warned against the common mistake of telling existing team members to spend "50% of their time" on AI initiatives. The day-to-day always wins. Webflow's solution was to hire dedicated "go-to-market engineers" who focus 100% on building AI workflows. Murray even made a business case showing that two GTM engineers could replace the need for several SDR and ops hires by dramatically increasing productivity across the team.
Measure outcomes, not activities
For AI ROI measurement, don't look at workflow-level metrics. Instead, tie everything back to business outcomes. Time saved from account research should translate to account penetration – not just hours freed up. Murray's team tags automated campaigns to measure pipeline performance directly, treating AI-powered outbound the same way marketing ops has always measured campaign attribution.
2. How UserGems achieved 33% higher win rates by "manufacturing" dark social conversations
ABM, SDRs & ‘Manufactured’ Dark Funnel: How UserGems Runs Revenue Marketing, let´s talk ABM podcast (12/2/25)
TLDR:
Once an opportunity is opened, you can drive multi-threading by running ads to non-sales personas (like RevOps or Marketing).
Prioritize accounts based on job changes (past champions moving to new roles) rather than generic intent data.
Align SDR outreach timing perfectly with ad campaigns to create a "surround sound" effect.
The "dark social" Ad Strategy
Most marketers stop advertising once an account becomes an opportunity, assuming it's now "in sales' hands." Trinity Nguyen, CMO + AI GTM at UserGems, took a different approach to solve a classic RevOps problem: lack of multithreading.
They ran an experiment where 50% of open opportunities were served ads targeting other buying personas (like RevOps and Marketing) with messages like "Someone on your team is talking to us". The goal wasn't clicks or demo requests; it was to "manufacture" dark social conversations – prompting colleagues to screenshot the ad and ask the champion, "Hey, are we talking to these guys?".
The result? The cohort served with these multithreading ads had a 33% higher win rate than the control group.
Prioritization via Job Changes, Not Just Intent
For RevOps teams struggling to score leads effectively, "intent data" (like G2 searches) can sometimes be vague. A stronger signal is relationship data.
Nguyen's team prioritizes accounts where a past customer or champion has recently been hired. This serves as the primary trigger for account selection. Instead of a generic "cold" outreach, the message becomes, "Hey, you used us at Company A, and now you're at Company B." This approach drove 90% of their early pipeline.
Orchestration is a RevOps Job
The success of Account-Based Marketing (ABM) relies on tight orchestration, which is fundamentally an operations challenge. Nguyen emphasizes that "orchestrating the herding of cats" is the hardest part.
When an ABM campaign launches against a target account (e.g., Gong), the SDR sequence must start on the exact same day. This prevents the disjointed experience where a prospect sees an ad on Monday but doesn't get a call until Friday. To achieve this, UserGems actually has SDRs report into Marketing to ensure incentives and workflows are perfectly aligned, though the principle applies regardless of reporting lines.
The Bottom Line
You can't force a prospect to buy, but you can "manufacture" the internal conversations that lead to a purchase. By running multithreading ads during the sales cycle and prioritizing accounts based on past user movement, you turn passive "intent" into active pipeline.
3. Is your revenue funnel a black box? Build a “revenue factory”: Kyle Norton's framework for scaling from $2M to $50M ARR
How to build a Revenue Machine with Kyle Norton, CRO,Verticals podcast (12/3/25)
TLDR:
Treat your revenue engine like a manufacturing line by breaking stages down into "micro-stages" (e.g., meeting booked vs. meeting showed).
Hire "systems thinkers" over charismatic leaders for high-velocity sales ops roles.
Implement a "Traffic Light" system to manage the chaos of constant process changes and rollouts.
The "Revenue Factory" Mindset
In high-velocity environments (like vertical SaaS or SMB sales), the traditional RevOps approach of tracking just "Lead," "Opportunity," and "Closed Won" isn't granular enough. Kyle Norton, CRO at Owner, argues for adopting a "Revenue Factory" mindset. This means instrumenting the funnel into micro-stages to isolate specific points of failure.
For example, instead of just tracking "Meetings," you must distinguish between "Meeting Booked," "Meeting Rescheduled," "Meeting No-Show," and "Meeting Completed".
By doing the boring work of instrumenting these specific data points, you can identify exactly where the leverage lies. Do you have a lead quality problem, or do you have a show-rate problem?
You can't fix what you can't see, and standard CRM stages often hide the truth.
Hiring Systems Thinkers over Deal Jockeys
A common mistake in scaling operations is hiring sales leaders who are great "deal jockeys" – charismatic closers who can rally a room – rather than "systems thinkers".
For RevOps leaders, the ideal partner in sales leadership (or the ideal profile for a RevOps hire) is someone who views the world through data and "volume times conversion rate".
In transactional sales, organization often beats sales craft. Norton noted that highly organized reps who manage their calendars and follow-ups perfectly often outperform those with superior sales skills but poor discipline.
The Traffic Light Model for Change Management
One of the hardest parts of RevOps is rolling out changes without breaking the sales team's rhythm. Norton suggests a rigorous "Traffic Light" framework to manage this chaos:
Green Light Changes: Minor updates that don't disrupt workflow. These can be handled via a simple Slack announcement.
Yellow Light Changes: Moderate updates requiring attention but no fundamental shift.
Red Light Changes: Major shifts, such as pricing overhauls or new territory models. These require mandatory meeting every other week to review impact.
By categorizing changes this way, you prevent "change fatigue" and ensure that critical updates get the attention they deserve.
The Bottom Line
Stop treating your revenue funnel as a black box. By instrumenting micro-stages (booked vs. held) and categorizing your rollouts using the Traffic Light system, you move from "guessing and checking" to engineering a predictable revenue outcome.
Disclaimer
The RevOps Leader summarizes and comments on publicly available podcasts for educational and informational purposes only. It is not legal, financial, or investment advice; please consult qualified professionals before acting. We attribute brands and podcast titles only to identify the source; such nominative use is consistent with trademark fair-use principles. Limited quotations and references are used for commentary and news reporting under U.S. fair-use doctrine.
