GTM 168: How ZoomInfo Built a $1B RevOps Engine, The Operating Cadence Behind Breakout Growth | Tessa Whittaker

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Oct 28, 2025

Tessa Whittaker, VP of Revenue Operations at ZoomInfo, leads a 70-person team powering a $1B revenue engine. She discusses her innovative personal operating system, emphasizing the importance of mapping vision to actionable goals. Tessa also shares strategies for creating a predictable operating rhythm in RevOps and the counterintuitive approach of automating down-market tasks to free up resources for high-value enterprise accounts. Additionally, she highlights the role of clean data in deploying AI and democratizing tool adoption through internal hackathons.

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ADVICE

Translate Vision Into Tracked Quarterly Workbacks

Break long-term vision into tactical quarterly actions using a V2MOM-style workback and review weekly.
Track five life domains and color-code your calendar to ensure time allocation matches priorities.

ADVICE

Protect Sleep And Cut Alcohol During Sprints

Simplify health during sprints by cutting alcohol and prioritizing at least seven hours of sleep.
Use these two levers to preserve energy and maintain performance under heavy load.

INSIGHT

Automate Downmarket To Scale Upmarket

To go upmarket, automate and simplify downmarket so scarce human sellers can focus on enterprise deals.
Reallocate resources by removing manual downmarket tasks through process and AI automation.

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Tessa Whittaker is the VP of Revenue Operations at ZoomInfo, where she leads a 70-person global team powering one of SaaS’s most efficient $1B+ revenue engines. Over the past decade, she’s helped architect the systems, cadence, and AI workflows that underpin how ZoomInfo operates at scale.

Tessa is known as one of the most thoughtful operators in tech, bringing structure, clarity, and rigor to how GTM organizations run. Her work sits at the intersection of data, process, and execution, proving that with the right operating cadence, even the most complex go-to-market systems can move in rhythm.

Discussed in this episode

Building a personal operating system (Salesforce's V2MOM, Notion, weekly reviews) that maps vision → methods → measurable actions.
“Operating rhythm” for GTM: the meetings, reviews, and enablement that create predictable execution.
Color-coding calendars to align time with quarterly KPIs (and fixing misallocation).
Counterintuitive up-market move: automate down-market so scarce humans focus on enterprise.
AI intake & prioritization agent: compressing 10–15 hrs of RevOps scoping into one interaction.
Democratizing creation: org-wide agent “hackathons,” usage leaderboards, and adoption lessons.
Health OS during sprints: cut alcohol, protect sleep, simplify to sustain output.
What to buy vs. build; auditing tech stacks; avoiding (and accepting some) agent sprawl.

Episode highlights

00:00 — Systems beat motivation; why cadence creates consistency.

01:36 — RevOps as connective tissue of SaaS; the “invest earlier” regret.

03:58 — From EA to SVP-level ops leader to VP RevOps: the long workback.

06:51 — Why operators obsess over simplifying complexity.

12:24 — Time as the scarcest resource: color-coding calendars to goals.

20:05 — The RevOps operating rhythm at ZoomInfo (and how AI slots in).

21:48 — Going upmarket? Automate downmarket first to free resources.

31:19 — Intake agent: collapsing 10–15 hours of back-and-forth into one interaction.

36:48 — Democratizing creation: internal agent hackathons and a usage leaderboard.

44:30 — The Alchemist and reframing growth: get uncomfortable to keep climbing.

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors

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Guest links

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessa-whittaker-44903940

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