Guest
Olga Traskova,
VP of Revenue
Operations at Birdeye
"Revenue Architect Podcast"
Episode 6
Revenue Architect is the podcast for revenue leaders navigating the evolving landscape of sales, RevOps, and revenue management. Each episode dives into practical strategies, proven frameworks, and real stories from operators who are building and scaling modern revenue engines.
In this episode, we talk with Olga Traskova, VP of Revenue Operations at Birdeye, the number one agentic marketing platform for multi-location brands.
With seventeen years in operations across marketing, marketing ops, sales ops, and CS ops, Olga has led RevOps since 2016 and helped shape the function’s evolution from “alignment” to orchestration.
She shares how her teams build a forecasting rhythm, install lightweight guardrails that improve deal quality, and design a Salesforce-centered stack that protects margins while speeding the path from quote to cash.
Key takeaways:
- Forecast accuracy improves when you create a weekly rhythm of submissions, inspections, and leadership reviews.
- A single field for close date push reasons can reduce surprises and reveal root causes quickly.
- RevOps acts as the revenue integrity office by defining swim lanes for Sales Ops and Deal Desk.
- Real-time margin visibility and commission cues steer sellers toward healthier deals.
- Centralized, trusted data beats shiny tools when building a scalable revenue stack.
- Go-to-market engineers connect tools and automations to turn processes into orchestration.
Tune in for actionable insights from a RevOps leader on building forecast discipline, reducing friction, and driving durable growth.
Forecasting That Sticks: Rituals Over Heroics
Forecasting discipline is built on rituals, not rescues. At Birdeye, every layer of the field submits forecasts on schedule. Weekly calls inspect pipeline health, stage accuracy, and close dates. RevOps enforces entry and exit criteria so the pipeline becomes a trusted signal, and leaders adjust numbers based on shared facts instead of instinct.
Olga calls it
“muscle memory for predictable revenue.”
“It’s about turning chaos into a symphony creating predictable daily rituals around
execution.”
The One-Field Fix That Changed Forecasts
Small changes can unlock massive clarity. When Olga’s team added a single “close date push reason” field in Salesforce, forecast surprises dropped by 30%. That one dropdown captured why deals were delayed revealing whether issues were internal (approvals, legal) or external (customer timing).
“We’re not collecting data for the sake of data, we collect it to improve the process and speed execution.”
By distinguishing between friction types, her team could address bottlenecks faster and prevent the same issues from recurring. The result: fewer slipped deals and a cleaner, more predictable forecast.
Revenue Integrity and Clear Swim Lanes
At Birdeye, RevOps serves as what Olga calls the “revenue integrity office.” Sales Ops owns productivity and process adoption, Deal Desk manages approvals and guardrails, and RevOps orchestrates it all connecting data, visibility, and accountability.
“Clarifying roles and swim lanes drops duplicate reporting and raises trust.”
Defined ownership has reduced internal noise, shortened approval cycles, and made it easier for sellers to know exactly who to go to when deals need support. It’s structure without bureaucracy alignment in motion.
Margin Control and Connected Systems
When CRM, CPQ, billing, and ERP operate in silos, revenue visibility fractures. Olga’s solution was connecting these systems to bring real-time margin insights to the deal level. Reps now see both profitability and commission impact before sending a quote—encouraging healthier pricing and fewer post-close surprises.
“Once you connect CRM, CPQ, billing, and ERP, you see margin per deal in real time and friction drops everywhere.”
She also advocates embedding simple commission calculators within the deal flow, turning revenue health into an everyday metric instead of a month-end discovery.
Building on Data Trust
For Olga, no stack AI or otherwise works without clean data. She calls it “the foundation of any go-to-market architecture.” Her team defines the few data points that truly matter, selects a single source of truth, and continuously audits the hygiene of core systems.
“Garbage in, garbage out still applies even in the age of AI.”
Rather than chasing new tools, Birdeye focuses on centralization and interoperability, ensuring each platform Salesforce, CPQ, billing plays a clear, defined role in the revenue ecosystem.
The Rise of the Go-to-Market Engineer
As automation expands, Olga sees a new kind of RevOps talent emerging: the Go-to-Market Engineer. These professionals understand both the business and the technology, able to stitch small, specialized tools into cohesive systems that reduce manual work and accelerate insights.
“We can’t be selling in 2026 the way we sold in 2005.”
Olga believes this hybrid skill set, technical curiosity paired with strategic thinking, will define the next phase of RevOps leadership.
Actionable Insights for Revenue Leaders
- Create a weekly forecasting rhythm with time-boxed submissions and leadership reviews.
- Add a required push-reason field to cut surprises and fix root causes early.
- Define swim lanes for Sales Ops, Deal Desk, and RevOps to reduce overlap and confusion.
- Expose real-time margin and estimated commission impact to steer better deals.
- Pick a source of truth, standardize key fields, and integrate around that core.
- Staff or upskill go-to-market engineers to connect tooling and automate handoffs.
Closing thoughts
Predictability comes from orchestration. When you pair simple guardrails with a tight operating rhythm and a clean data backbone, forecasting stabilizes, cycles shorten, and margins improve. As Olga puts it, alignment is the love language of RevOps, and orchestration is how you speak it every day.
If you want to build a process-first Salesforce stack, wire revenue systems for real-time margin control, and add the automations that keep forecasts honest, Bolt Today can partner with you to design and implement it. Let’s turn your forecast into performance, quarter after quarter.
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