The ACE framework: Transforming cross-functional chaos into revenue results

Let me paint you a picture that might feel uncomfortably familiar.

Picture this: You're sitting in a conference room with stakeholders from across your revenue organization. The SVP of Sales is complaining that your CRM is broken.

Marketing's upset that Sales won't follow up on their leads. Your CEO just wants accurate reporting for the board. And Implementation is frustrated, they're getting deals with zero context.

Sound like your last quarterly business review?

This exact scenario played out in my previous role as SVP of Revenue Operations and Enablement. I walked into what I call "the meeting of misaligned expectations" and realized everyone thought they had different problems. The truth was, they all had the same problem: they just couldn't see it yet.

When everyone's problem is actually the same problem

In that memorable meeting, I met with five key stakeholders, and each one had their own version of what was broken. Mary, our SVP of Sales, immediately launched into how HubSpot was eating up her team's selling time. "My reps spend more time clicking boxes than talking to prospects," she said. Fair point.

Then Larry from Marketing jumped in with a look on his face that... well, imagine accidentally stepping in something unpleasant on your way out the door. That was Larry's expression when Mary criticized the system he'd built.

His response? "We generate quality leads. Sales just can't close them. Maybe you should focus on sales training instead."

Josh, our CFO, kept it simple. He wanted his reports. His pie charts. His board deck. That's all he cared about: getting accurate data for his quarterly presentations.

Meanwhile, Joe, our other sales leader, insisted his team could close deals just fine. The problem, according to him, was that everything fell apart once deals moved to implementation. "It's like sending deals into a black hole," he complained.

Jamie from Implementation had a different take. "We get deals with zero information. No stakeholder details. No context. Half the time, customers ghost us and then cancel."

Here's what struck me: They were all describing symptoms of the same underlying issue. We had a massive go-live problem that was bleeding revenue. In our business, outsourcing, not SaaS, if clients weren't trained and operational, we weren't getting paid. Period.

This wasn't just about hurt feelings or departmental friction. This was about revenue. Real money was left on the table because our teams couldn't work together effectively.

Why RevOps struggles with strategic influence

After nearly 25 years in this business (yes, I started selling Yellow Pages ads, Google it if you're under 30), I've learned something crucial: RevOps professionals face a unique challenge when it comes to influence and collaboration.

Consider these sobering statistics: Only about half of respondents in a recent Sales Ops survey view RevOps as truly strategic. The other half? They see us as tactical executors. Even worse, 79% still categorize RevOps as "sales-adjacent," despite our broader mandate across the entire revenue engine.

Here's the kicker: When adoption rates tank or conversion metrics miss targets, guess whose problem it becomes? Ours. Even though we don't have direct control over the sales team's behavior or marketing's processes. We can't force anyone to use the tools we implement. We can't make sales reps follow the processes we design.

We spend 30-50% of our time collaborating with other departments, yet we often lack the formal authority to drive change. We know where all the bodies are buried in the organization; we see the inefficiencies, the broken handoffs, the wasted opportunities. But knowing and fixing are two very different things.

This is why I developed a framework that's helped me navigate these challenges and actually drive meaningful change. I call it ACE: Ask, Collaborate, Educate, and Execute.

The ACE framework in action

Let me break down each component and show you how to apply it in your organization.

Ask: The power of understanding before solving

Most RevOps professionals make a critical mistake early on. We come in with solutions before we truly understand the problems. We're excited about that new tool, that process improvement, that integration that's going to change everything.

Stop right there.

Instead, start with questions. Open-ended questions. When I meet with stakeholders, my opening line is simple: "Tell me about your problems." Then I shut up and listen.

This approach does several things. First, it positions you as an ally, not a threat. People often worry that RevOps will come in and take away their tools, their processes, their control. By asking questions first, you're showing respect for their experience and expertise.

Second, it uncovers the real issues. In my story above, everyone thought they had different problems. Through careful questioning, I discovered they were all struggling with the same broken handoff process, they just experienced it differently.

Here's how to ask effectively:

Start with broad questions about challenges and pain points. Don't lead with "Would you like to try Outreach or SalesLoft?" Ask "What's preventing your team from hitting their targets?" or "Where do you see the biggest bottlenecks in your process?"

Dig deeper with follow-ups. When someone says, "The CRM sucks," ask them to walk you through their typical day. Where specifically does it fail them? What would "good" look like?

Map out data sources and system ownership. Who owns what? Where does data flow? What systems don't talk to each other? I once discovered we had four separate Sales Navigator licenses being expensed by individual reps because no one knew others wanted the same tool.

Create a visual representation of your findings. I use a simple bowtie model showing the customer journey with all our processes, metrics, and tools mapped around it. No vendor logos; I learned that lesson the hard way when it turned into a tool debate instead of a process discussion.

Collaborate: Building bridges, not silos

Vanilla Ice had it right: "Stop, collaborate and listen." (Yes, I just aged myself again.)

Collaboration in RevOps requires intentionality. You can't just work with the people you like or the departments that "get it." You need to build relationships across the entire organization, including, especially, with the people who might resist your initiatives.

Here's the hard truth: You won't like everyone you work with. Some stakeholders will be difficult, resistant, or just plain unpleasant. But if you only collaborate with your allies, you'll never achieve the cross-functional buy-in necessary for real change.

Set up regular touchpoints with key stakeholders. These might be formal one-on-ones with C-suite executives or informal coffee chats with individual contributors. The format matters less than the consistency.

Find out what each person cares about. The CFO wants accurate forecasting. The sales manager wants easier pipeline management. The implementation lead wants complete customer information. Understand their priorities and speak to them.

Create collaborative exercises that bring people together. One of my favorites is building a customer journey map as a group. Get representatives from each department in a room (or on a Zoom) and map out every step of your customer's experience. You'll be amazed at what each team doesn't know about the others' processes.

Build your network of truth-tellers. In every organization, there are people who will give you the real story, not the sanitized version. Cultivate these relationships. Tell them explicitly: "Don't sugarcoat it. If this process sucks, I need to know why."

Focus on upward collaboration, too. Your ability to influence the C-suite directly impacts your effectiveness. Help your boss look good by preparing them with data and insights. Volunteer to present findings or lead initiatives that give you visibility at the executive level.

Educate: Tailoring your message for maximum impact

Communication is where many RevOps professionals stumble. We get excited about process improvements and system optimizations, forgetting that our audience doesn't share our enthusiasm for field mapping and workflow automation.

The key to effective education is tailoring your message to your audience. What works for a sales rep won't work for a CFO. What resonates with marketing might fall flat with customer success.

First, understand how your organization communicates. I once sent a detailed process update via email at a company where everyone lived in Slack. Guess how many people read it? Right. Zero. Know whether your company prefers email, Slack, Teams, or carrier pigeon, and use the appropriate channel.

When communicating up, focus on outcomes, not activities. Your CFO doesn't care that you reduced the opportunity object from 250 fields to 60. They care that sales reps now spend 15% more time selling, which should increase the pipeline by $2 million this quarter.

Use multiple formats to reinforce your message. Some people prefer written updates, others want a quick video, and some need to see it in a dashboard. I've found success creating short Loom videos for complex process changes, then following up with written documentation and live Q&A sessions.

Make it about them, always. Frame every change, every initiative, every request in terms of "What's in it for me?" from their perspective. Salespeople don't care about data hygiene; they care about closing deals faster. Marketing doesn't care about lead routing; they care about attribution and ROI.

Build credibility through small wins. Before tackling that massive CRM overhaul, fix something small but annoying that's been bothering people. When you deliver on the small stuff, people trust you with the big stuff.

Execute: Where strategy meets reality

Here's where the rubber meets the road. You can ask all the right questions, collaborate beautifully, and communicate flawlessly, but if you don't execute, none of it matters.

Execution in RevOps is particularly challenging because we're often implementing changes that require behavior change from people who don't report to us. We're asking sales reps to adopt new processes, marketing to change their lead scoring, and customer success to update fields they've been ignoring.

Start with a pilot group. Don't try to boil the ocean. Find a friendly team or region willing to test your changes. Work out the kinks with people who want you to succeed before rolling out to skeptics.

Measure everything, but focus on what matters. Yes, track adoption rates and process compliance, but tie everything back to revenue impact. When you can show that teams following the new process close deals 20% faster, adoption takes care of itself.

Address the root cause, not just symptoms. In my opening story, we could have just trained sales on better handoffs to implementation. Instead, we rebuilt the entire process, created automated workflows to capture and transfer critical information, and established SLAs between teams. We attacked the root cause, not just the visible problems.

Plan for resistance and iteration. Your first version won't be perfect. Build in feedback loops and be ready to adjust. When Jamie from Implementation said our new handoff process was missing key fields, we added them. When sales said the workflow created too many tasks, we consolidated them.

Celebrate wins publicly. When that pilot team sees success, shout it from the rooftops. Nothing drives adoption like peer success stories. "The Northeast team reduced its sales cycle by 15 days using the new process" is more powerful than any executive mandate.

Real results from real collaboration

Let me share what happened when we applied the ACE framework to that dysfunctional situation I described earlier.

First, we discovered that HubSpot really was broken, but not in the way Mary thought. The system had been built piecemeal over the years with no overall architecture. We brought in a HubSpot expert (sometimes you need specialized help) and rebuilt it from the ground up.

But we didn't stop at fixing the technology. We aligned our entire go-to-market process. We implemented MEDDIC, but not just as a sales methodology; we built it into our CRM, created playbooks, trained the team, and aligned all our tools to support it.

We created clear handoff processes between teams with automated workflows to ensure no critical information was lost. Implementation started getting complete customer profiles. Sales knew exactly when and how their deals transitioned. Marketing could track leads through the entire journey.

The results spoke for themselves. Deal velocity increased. Implementation times decreased. Customer satisfaction scores improved. Revenue, remember, that's what we're here for, grew significantly.

Most importantly, those contentious stakeholder meetings? They transformed. Instead of finger-pointing and blame, we had productive discussions about optimization and growth. Mary stopped complaining about HubSpot. Jamie stopped complaining about sales. They started working together.

Your path to strategic influence

The path from tactical executor to strategic partner isn't easy, but it's absolutely achievable. The ACE framework (Ask, Collaborate, Educate, Execute) provides a roadmap for building the relationships and credibility necessary to drive real change.

Remember, we're uniquely positioned in our organizations. We see across all revenue functions. We understand the connections others miss. We know where the opportunities lie. The challenge is translating that knowledge into influence and action.

Start small. Pick one broken handoff, one frustrated stakeholder, one missed opportunity. Apply the ACE framework. Ask questions to understand the real problem. Collaborate to design a solution. Educate stakeholders on the why and how. Then execute relentlessly.

As you build success stories, your influence grows. As your influence grows, you can tackle bigger challenges. Before you know it, you're not just fixing problems, you're preventing them. You're not just supporting revenue, you're driving it.

The next time you're in a meeting where everyone thinks they have different problems, remember: They probably don't. They're likely all struggling with the same underlying issue, just experiencing it from different angles. Your job is to see the connection, build the bridges, and create solutions that work for everyone.

That's how we transform from order-takers to strategic partners. That's how we move from fixing systems to driving revenue. That's how we ACE the challenge of cross-functional collaboration and finally get the strategic recognition RevOps deserves.

The bullets are coming at you from all directions in RevOps. But with the right framework and approach, you can dodge them Matrix-style and emerge as the strategic leader your organization needs. Are you ready to ACE it?