5 Ways Running Revenue Operations Made Me a Better Product Marketer

This follows my last post on how responsibility for product management, Revenue Operations, and marketing made me a better product marketer. Running RevOps gave me firsthand exposure to sales cycles, customer objections, and why deals were won, lost, or stalled, rather than relying on secondhand sales feedback. Here are five lessons I subsequently applied to product marketing.

1. I learned to look beyond sales objections. When customers said our product was too expensive, I learned to examine whether we had made a compelling enough business case/value to justify the price. When they favored a competitor’s features, I looked at whether those capabilities mattered to their buying decision or whether our differentiation wasn’t coming through. That changed how I developed positioning and objection-handling content.

2. I learned why deals stalled. A deal stuck after a demo might need technical validation. One stuck with finance might need a TCO model. One stalled in executive review might lack a compelling business case. Seeing these patterns taught me to tailor proof points to the buyer and the specific hurdle, rather than assuming one sales deck would work for everyone.

3. I learned to follow conversion, not just lead volume. RevOps taught me to examine stage-to-stage conversion, win rates, velocity, and slippage by segment, source, and product. Some campaigns generated plenty of opportunities but few wins. Later, I used that insight to focus product marketing on improving the quality of opportunities and addressing gaps in the funnel, not just producing more content.

4. I learned to use forecasts to set priorities. Forecast reviews revealed patterns that individual deal reviews could miss. If win rates in a segment repeatedly fell short of plan, I investigated whether our messaging addressed that segment’s buying criteria. I carried that discipline into product marketing: prioritize the positioning and content gaps with the greatest potential impact on revenue, rather than the loudest requests.

5. I learned that enablement is about usability, not volume. I saw salespeople struggle to find relevant material in large content libraries. I subsequently focused on making sales content easier to find, organized by sales stage, buyer, and objection, rather than building large libraries of collateral that salespeople struggled to navigate. Today, GenAI layered on top of content libraries makes finding relevant content much easier. I also favored short, relevant microlearning tied to current deal challenges over the more common “drinking from a firehose” enablement sessions.

My biggest takeaway? Running RevOps taught me to ground product marketing decisions in what buyers actually do and what sales teams actually need. I still apply that perspective to positioning, messaging, and enablement today.