Some people fall into RevOps by accident...others end up running it for a company that just acquired a "competitor".
That’s the case for Elis Olsson, head of revenue operations at Scrive, Sweden’s fast-growing contract management platform.
We sat down to talk about:
- What revops really looks like when it touches sales, cs, marketing, and finance
- The realities of post-merger CRM migration
- And of course… commissions
Here are a few of my favorite takeaways from our chat 👇
1. Revops isn't just sales support
↳ at Scrive, Elis's team is involved across the entire customer journey. This includes building go-to-market processes and supporting finance with billing tooling
↳ his work also includes due diligence and post-acquisition integration (like migrating crms in-house with no external consultants)
2. Commissions should be simple
↳ Elis keeps commission models clear and motivating: AEs earn from arr + one-time fees, SDRs are paid for meetings and referred arr, and CS reps are rewarded for expansions and churn reduction
↳ His rule: “reps should know how much they’ll earn when they close a deal, without needing a spreadsheet”
3. Vertical + size-based sales structure
↳ Scrive combines vertical specialization with company size tiers: enterprise and mid-market get dedicated reps, while SMB is served through partners or self-serve
↳ that dual structure feeds into inbound, outbound, and ABM motions, especially strong in the Nordics where Scrive is a well-known name
4. Ai is coming, but humans still have the edge
↳ while Scrive is exploring large language models for internal automation, Elis believes humans still outperform ai in cold outreach...for now
↳ tools like Gong and Chorus are his top picks for enabling ai in sales because of the rich data they provide from meetings
5. When it comes to commission plans
↳ uncapped > capped
↳ simple > complex
↳ one or two KPIs > eight different targets
↳ and yes, he budgets commissions at the rep level to align incentives with growth
His closing thought?
“build for what humans do well, and let AI handle the rest”
🚀 if Scrive becomes Sweden’s next unicorn, you’ll know why