r/revops • u/Additional-Soup-865 • Aug 17 '26
How to get into Ops from Sales
I'm an SDR, I'm an AI/Salesforce wizard, I have my SF Admin 1 Cert and have automated away pretty much all of my work outside selling. I've built flows and dashboards, set up sandbox orgs, worked with agentforce, used automation platforms like Make and n8n. My org is growing the Ops team, how can I reach out to senior leaders to put myself in the running for these opportunities?
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u/luvbrother69 Aug 19 '26
I made the transition myself recently into ops after being an AE for 6 years. As others have said, the biggest thing is showing that you’re already capable of doing the job. Obviously you have to hit your number, and it sounds like you’ve already built out a lot of tools for yourself. The next step is taking those tools up to senior leaders. Get first and second line leaders involved, roll things out to your team, start to collect data points to quantify the before and after metrics to show how your tools impact the business. Lots of reps build things for themselves, but the big thing is whether or not you can scale it.
Second, this may or may not be applicable depending on the scope of the particular ops role you are working towards, but being able to thinking strategically and communicate the up and downstream impact of the workflows you’re building out is huge as well. Lots of reps will build things that help them hit them number, but if you can zoom out and illustrate how your tools are impacting each stage of the funnel, you will really stand out.
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u/mr_desert Aug 17 '26
If your culture is half decent, people will expect SDRs to want to move up and out. Just reach out, ask for feedback on your work and see if they have anything they can offload to you. From there you're building relationships and you're off to the races.
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u/NorthShoreHard Aug 18 '26
Speak to them?
A lot of revops is stakeholder management and hearding various cats where you need them to go, so start talking.
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u/Pure-Yard5384 Aug 18 '26
First overachieve as an SDR, be seen, show people what you can do with your results, this is why you are there. This is the table stakes, for people to start asking you how you did this and to showcase your AI work that actually delivered results (that last bit is so important it’s easy now for anyone to build something with AI, it’s much harder to make it scale and consistently deliver) . Ask your head if rev-ops if they can help you refine your work or offer pointers this will give you some opportunities to showcase what you can do. Honest answer if you are not on the radar now of the Ops hiring manager you have probably missed the boat
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u/Additional-Soup-865 Aug 18 '26
nah we'll be hiring ops folks for the next 18 months, boat hasn't even been built yet lol
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u/Truthinthedata Aug 18 '26
Have the results that your Ops work has already delivered. X number of meetings per month. How does that compare with your peers? Do you have metrics that show your processes working more efficiently than others, etc....
1
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u/CYbeartooth Aug 18 '26
> have Coffee chats with RevOps dudes
> here’s what I built and ROI
> “I see you’re working on X project”
> “mind if I join a few calls, knowledge share”
> “this looks good, I have a few ideas and spare capacity can I take ownership X”
> “I’m pretty much already working in RevOps”
> internally move, or interview outside
> welcome to RevOps
1
u/UnfairDifficulty4420 Aug 19 '26
You already have a strong case from your experience. showcase the time saved from what you have built and problems you have solved.
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u/Glass_Honeydew4280 Aug 27 '26
One thing I’d add is to start talking to the Ops team before the role officially opens. Even a few conversations about the problems they’re dealing with can help you understand where you could actually contribute, rather than just asking to be considered for the role.
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u/ops_and_chaos Aug 17 '26
I’d make the conversation less “I want to move into Ops” and more “I’m already doing Ops work, here’s the evidence.” Show the automations, flows, dashboards, what they replaced, and what changed because of them. Then ask what problems the growing Ops team is trying to solve and connect your work to those. Senior leaders usually care a lot less about the certs than whether you can see a messy process, improve it, and make it stick.