Revenue operations becomes useful when technical discipline stays connected to the people doing the work. Juhi Palat's career began with biomedical engineering, a poorly maintained hospital asset database, and an instinctive question: how can anyone report or plan when the underlying records are wrong?
That question led her into Salesforce, sales operations, and eventually leadership at Velo3D. Her experience shows that clean data and good systems are only half the function. Strong operators also understand frontline urgency, listen to sellers, and know when feedback should change the design.
Efficiency was an early operating instinct
Juhi's first job was as a barista. The work required memory, speed, and the ability to manage many combinations under pressure.
She also experimented with the system, creating drink combinations and looking for better ways to move through demand. That instinct later appeared in systems work: do not merely operate the process when a better design is possible.
Efficiency in RevOps should reduce friction while preserving the information the business needs.
Bad data can become a career signal
After studying biomedical engineering, Juhi worked in a hospital department that relied on an asset-management system full of inconsistent and misspelled records.
She became more interested in the database than the medical devices. The quality problem made reporting, planning, and assessment unreliable.
Revenue teams face the same constraint. Forecasts, territories, and coverage decisions cannot become more trustworthy than the account and opportunity data underneath them.
Systems expertise can grow from a real problem
At a Massachusetts startup, the team had recently adopted Salesforce. Juhi taught herself the platform by researching and building improvements whenever someone asked whether a workflow could require fewer clicks.
That is an effective way to develop systems skill because the learning remains connected to a user problem. Certification can add structure, but curiosity and repeated application create operating understanding.
When she later joined a three-person RevOps team in New York, she discovered how much more existed beyond Salesforce: the surrounding stack, functions, and cross-functional responsibilities.
Forecasting turns systems into business judgment
Forecasting accuracy became a natural specialty for Juhi. The question fascinated her: how do people know which deals will close, and how can a company predict the quarter credibly?
A forecast is not merely a rollup of fields. It combines seller judgment, stage definitions, evidence, manager inspection, historical patterns, and data quality.
RevOps improves the process by creating consistent definitions and making assumptions visible. It should not pretend uncertainty has disappeared.
Seller feedback requires discernment
Juhi argues that the best RevOps people work closely with sales. They listen seriously while distinguishing between feedback that reveals a design problem and a request that should not become policy.
That discernment depends on trust. Sellers need confidence that operations understands the work. Operations needs enough independence to protect data quality, consistency, and the broader system.
The relationship works when disagreement can be direct without becoming adversarial.
Salesforce is often blamed for a process problem
Juhi is willing to defend Salesforce in a market where criticizing it is common. The platform is highly customizable and continues to evolve.
That does not mean every Salesforce instance is good. A flexible system can reflect years of conflicting requirements and poor governance. Salespeople may experience the resulting friction as a platform failure when the organization designed the burden.
Operators should diagnose the implementation, data model, and process before assuming a replacement will solve the issue.
Early-career proximity can accelerate learning
Juhi also makes a case for spending part of an early career near a strong professional community. Her moves through New York and the West Coast created access to peers, managers, and opportunities that were harder to encounter in isolation.
Remote work can be effective. The underlying lesson is about deliberate proximity: people need mentors, feedback, and exposure to work beyond their current assignment.
The practical lesson for RevOps leaders
Juhi's career suggests a balanced operating standard:
- Treat data quality as a prerequisite for planning.
- Learn systems through concrete user problems.
- Build forecasting around evidence and explicit assumptions.
- Stay in regular conversation with sellers.
- Separate useful feedback from one-off preference.
- Diagnose process and governance before replacing the CRM.
- Create deliberate access to mentors and professional community.
Technical rigor and frontline empathy are not competing strengths. Together, they make revenue operations credible.
About the guest
Juhi Palat is Director of Sales Operations at Velo3D. She came to revenue operations from biomedical engineering, taught herself Salesforce at an early-stage company, and developed expertise in forecasting accuracy, CRM architecture, and sales-operations partnership.
