Before becoming a RevOps leader, Bennet Simonton spent years carrying a quota, navigating different sales cultures, different CRMs, and different levels of operational maturity. Across every company, he noticed the same pattern: RevOps was tightly aligned with leadership, but rarely connected to the people actually living inside the systems.
That disconnect eventually became his north star.
This frontline mindset is what shapes Bennet’s approach to systems, usability, handoffs, and GTM alignment.
A Frontline-First Approach to RevOps
When Bennet joins a new company, he doesn’t start with dashboards. He starts with people.
He shadows sellers one by one, from top performers, struggling reps, new AEs, former BDRs and watches how they actually work.
He wants to understand:
- How many clicks it takes to update an Opportunity
- What fields are confusing, redundant, or unused
- Where automations slow people down
- How tools like Outreach, ZoomInfo, or Nooks fit into the workflow
- What frustrations reps don’t bother reporting anymore
For Bennet, usability is a revenue lever.
If the tools are slow, cluttered, or inconsistent, teams lose time and pipeline.
When Salesforce, Outreach, and your dialer all feel like different planets, reps pay the tax in lost efficiency.
Aligning Sales, Ops, and CS Through the Handshake Moments
One of the biggest themes in the conversation was the hidden gaps between Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success (which most companies overlook).
Bennet fixes these by zooming in on what he calls “handshake points”:
- Inbound → BDR (speed, context, routing)
- BDR → AE (qualification, intent, data)
- AE → CS (expectations, discovery notes, risks)
These are the moments where revenue is either protected or lost.
He has zero tolerance for:
- Lost reasons like “not interested”
- Discovery notes hidden in Google Docs
- CS teams missing key context
- Reps duplicating work because systems don’t talk to each other
Bennet pushes for a world where the CSM can open an Opportunity and instantly understand the narrative of the deal — without having to chase the AE.
This isn’t fluff. It’s GTM alignment in practice.
Rebuilding Systems from the Ground Up
Even when Bennet inherits an existing CRM, he treats each new role as an opportunity to reset the foundation.
His first few weeks typically include:
- Field audits: pruning unused fields and consolidating duplicates
- Stage logic review: ensuring each stage represents a real selling behavior
- Automation cleanup: removing blockers, fixing validation rules, simplifying flows
- Layout consistency: making Salesforce, Outreach, and dialers feel familiar
- Data integrity work: improving accuracy before layering on advanced reporting
His belief is simple:
Nothing impactful can be built until the foundation is clean.
A messy CRM isn’t just an annoyance — it’s the reason forecasting is off, handoffs break, and cross-team trust erodes.
A Realistic, Pragmatic View of Data Providers
When the conversation turned to data tools — ZoomInfo, Cognism, Clay — Bennet’s perspective was refreshingly grounded.
To him, contact accuracy is still the single most important ingredient in sales.
“Give me an Excel sheet with mobile numbers for my top prospects and I can sell. Without that, nothing else matters.”
He believes in using Clay as a workflow engine — but only when paired with at least one top-tier data source. Otherwise, companies risk:
- Bad numbers
- False positives
- Wasted BDR time
- Polluted CRM data
His go-to “ideal world” waterfall:
- U.S. → ZoomInfo → Cognism → Clay enrichments
- Europe → Cognism → ZoomInfo → Clay enrichments
Not flashy. Not trendy. Just effective.
Documenting the Journey Through RevOps Bennett
Outside of work, Bennet runs a YouTube channel (RevOps Bennet) where he teaches tactical RevOps skills: how to clean Salesforce layouts, how to fix common CRM problems, how to think about data quality, and how to make tools easier to use.
The channel started as a creative outlet and a chance to learn editing, lighting, storytelling, and design. But it’s also become a way to start conversations across the RevOps community — sharing the guidance he wishes he had earlier in his career.
His philosophy there mirrors his philosophy in RevOps:
share what works, simplify complexity, and learn from others.
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