Building a Predictable Revenue Engine: Kari Roberts on RevOps Strategy

Mastering RevOps: Kari Roberts on Driving Scalable and Predictable Revenue

Revenue operations (RevOps) has rapidly evolved from a supporting function to a strategic growth engine. For many organizations, it’s no longer enough to have SalesOps or Deal Desk teams working in isolation—companies need an integrated, end-to-end approach that connects people, processes, and technology to drive predictable revenue.

We spoke with Kari Roberts, a seasoned RevOps and enablement leader with 15 years of experience scaling technology companies, from startups to enterprise organizations. Kari shared her insights on building a revenue engine that delivers consistent results while empowering sales teams, aligning customer journeys, and leveraging technology.

Moving Beyond SalesOps: RevOps as a Revenue Orchestrator

Kari emphasizes that modern RevOps isn’t just about supporting sales—it’s about coordinating revenue across the entire customer lifecycle. Traditional sales structures, like hunter-farmer models, are giving way to lifecycle-based, outcome-focused account teams.

By tracking customer health, product usage, renewal risks, and expansion potential, RevOps ensures account teams are aligned around long-term outcomes rather than individual transactions. Compensation plans must reflect this shift, rewarding not just new bookings but ongoing customer success. This alignment between strategy and execution allows organizations to focus on predictable growth rather than short-term wins.

The Rise of Revenue Management

Revenue management has emerged as the backbone connecting selling, recognition, collection, and growth. Kari points out that when operations function in silos, organizations risk slower deal cycles, revenue leakage, and inconsistent forecasting.

To counter this, RevOps must act as the orchestrator across functions. Strong governance, clear rules of engagement, and disciplined processes around pricing, discounting, and handoffs are critical. This elevates the RevOps function from tactical support to a strategic, trust-building partner for executives.

Structuring RevOps for Execution

A successful RevOps organization is not one-size-fits-all. Kari highlights a hybrid model that balances centralization with embedded business partners. She identifies five critical pillars:

Centralizing critical functions, like compensation, ensures consistency, while hybrid roles allow RevOps partners to work closely with field teams, gather feedback, and continuously improve processes.

Controlling Margin and Discounting

One of the most common friction points in revenue execution is margin control. Kari is clear: RevOps owns the guardrails around discounting. By collaborating with sales, finance, legal, and product teams, RevOps establishes standard rules for discount approvals, evaluates competitive dynamics, and ensures consistent treatment across opportunities. This protects margins while still enabling sales teams to win deals strategically.

Technology, AI, and the Intelligent Revenue Engine

Technology should reinforce processes, not compensate for broken ones. Kari stresses the importance of designing the operating model first, then aligning tools to support the revenue lifecycle. Salesforce and other systems should become the single source of truth, with adoption reinforced through training and engagement.

AI acts as an amplifier, providing predictive insights on deal risk, pipeline scoring, and scenario modeling—but only if the underlying data and processes are strong. With a robust foundation, AI helps RevOps move from reporting on historical performance to influencing future revenue outcomes.

Scaling Strategic Influence

For RevOps to become a strategic partner, it’s not enough to focus on tools and processes. Kari explains that leaders must create strategic data insights that enable influence at the executive level. By building credibility through disciplined execution, data-driven forecasting, and integrated processes, RevOps can become a central driver of organizational growth.

Kari Roberts’ insights highlight that predictable revenue requires an orchestrated, end-to-end approach. Organizations must break down silos, align account teams to customer outcomes, and build hybrid RevOps structures that centralize governance while empowering business partners. By pairing disciplined processes with technology and AI, RevOps can move from tactical support to strategic growth leadership, ensuring consistent revenue and long-term customer success.