The RevOps Review w/ Gabe Rothman

VP of Revenue Operations at Rescale

A year ago I met Gabe Rothman at RevOps AF. We’ve gotten to know each other over the past year and met up again this year in New Orleans at the 2nd year of RevOps AF. Gabe Rothman is VP of Revenue Operations at Rescale. He shares his experience on scaling go-to-market (GTM) operations across sales, marketing, CS, and partner teams. Gabe shares his non-linear career journey from civil litigation into tech, and how he eventually built a full-stack RevOps function at Rescale. The discussion explores AI's real use cases, the complexity of customer definitions in enterprise environments, tool consolidation vs. best-of-breed strategies, and the importance of problem-first RevOps thinking.

Listen here: Spotify | Apple. Brought to you by Cognism.

---

But first a word from our sponsors:

RevOps chaos slowing you down? Juggling disconnected tools, manual reports, and clunky workflows kills productivity and revenue. Zapier automates your processes, seamlessly integrating your sales, marketing, and RevOps stack—so you can focus on growth, not busywork. Start automating today and turn inefficiency into impact. Try Zapier now!

Q3 RevOps Impact Course Starts Next Month

A new cohort of the Unleashing Revenue Operations Impact (ROI) course will start 7/21. If you’re a Revenue Operator looking to skill up then this course may be for you. Sign up for the waitlist or register here today.

Q3 AI for RevOps Course Enrollment is Open

A new cohort of the AI for RevOps course will start 8/1. Sign up for the waitlist or register here today.

---

Key Takeaways

1. Non-Traditional Path to RevOps

   • Gabe began as a lawyer before transitioning into tech and consulting via Bluewolf.

   • At Rescale, he’s grown from RevOps director to VP, overseeing end-to-end GTM operations.

2. Full-Scope Ops Ownership

   • His team manages sales ops, marketing ops, CS ops, partner ops, enablement, analytics, deal desk, and GTM systems.

   • BizOps was spun out to finance to better align with pricing and margin work.

3. AI’s Near-Term Role in RevOps

   • AI is best applied to augment human capacity—especially in surfacing insights from large data sets.

   • Gabe favors use cases like account planning and activity aggregation, but cautions against viewing AI as a replacement for headcount.

4. Tech Stack Consolidation—With Caveats

   • Initially pursued tool consolidation (e.g., pushing into Salesforce-native features).

   • With AI advances, he's rethinking this—preferring specialized tools that interpret data and surface insights outside of the CRM.

5. Customer Hierarchy Complexity

   • At Rescale, a “customer” can mean many things—from a centralized procurement team to decentralized engineering groups.

   • The challenge is aligning hierarchies across Salesforce, product systems, and NetSuite to drive accurate reporting and billing.

6. Problem-First Mindset in RevOps

   • Don’t let internal stakeholders dictate the solution—dig into the real problem first.

   • Gabe trains his team to avoid becoming order takers and instead lead strategic problem-solving efforts.

---

Notable Quotes

"The overwhelm of possibility—that’s how AI feels right now. Everyone’s scrambling to figure out what actually helps."

"Is syncing activity data to the CRM even relevant anymore? I don’t care how many calls someone made. I care what it means."

"Consolidation made sense—until AI showed us how powerful specialized tools could be. Now we’re reevaluating."

"In RevOps, don’t take the solution as given. Get to the problem first."

"A customer is a concept, not a field. Especially in enterprise—it’s messy, and our systems have to reflect that."

---

Action Items for RevOps Leaders

1. Reevaluate tool stack decisions in light of new AI capabilities.

2. Map your customer hierarchy across systems to ensure accurate billing and reporting.

3. Use AI for insight generation, not just automation.

4. Train your team to reject surface-level asks and dig into root problems.

5. Balance consolidation with flexibility—avoid tech lock-in by understanding total cost of ownership.

---

Connect with Gabe Rothman
Email: gabe@rescale.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gprothman

---