Revenue Operations Tools: The Stack a VP Sales Actually Needs

Every VP Sales inherits a revenue operations tools stack. Sometimes it works. Usually, half the licenses are unused, the data's a mess, and the team has built workarounds on top of workarounds. You're stuck paying for tools nobody touches while missing capabilities the team actually needs.

We pulled tool mention data from 1,298 executive sales postings tracked by The CRO Report. The results show exactly which revenue operations tools companies expect their sales leaders to know, how often each one appears, and where the market is heading. Salesforce dominates at 180 mentions. Outreach is second at 65. AI/ML shows up in 411 postings, nearly a third of the dataset. And the long tail drops off fast.

Below is the full breakdown by category, with real pricing, a realistic budget model for a 20-person team, and a clear list of what you can skip.

What the Job Postings Tell You About Tool Priorities

Here's every named tool that appears in the dataset, ranked by mention count.

Tool	Category	Mentions	% of 1,298 Postings
Salesforce	CRM	180	13.9%
Outreach	Sales Engagement	65	5.0%
HubSpot	CRM	48	3.7%
Tableau	Analytics	11	0.8%
ZoomInfo	Data / Enrichment	5	0.4%
Gong	Conversation Intelligence	4	0.3%
LinkedIn Sales Nav	Prospecting	4	0.3%
Clari	Forecasting	1	0.1%
AI/ML (general)	Capability	411	31.7%
GenAI (specific)	Capability	21	1.6%

The drop-off after Salesforce and Outreach is steep. HubSpot at 48 is the only other tool above double digits. Everything else lives in single digits. That tells you something important: companies care deeply about CRM proficiency and engagement platform experience. The rest they'll train you on or figure out internally.

The AI/ML number at 411 is the outlier. It's not a tool. It's a capability requirement. More on that below.

The CRM Layer (You Don't Get to Choose)

Salesforce at 180 mentions. HubSpot at 48. Combined, they appear in 228 postings, 17.6% of the dataset. No other tool category comes close.

Salesforce: $25-$300/user/month

At 13.9% of all postings, Salesforce is the default for enterprise and upper mid-market sales organizations. The pricing range is wide because the product is modular. Sales Cloud Essentials starts at $25/user/month, which nobody at the VP Sales level is running. Enterprise at $165/user/month is the typical mid-market plan. Unlimited at $300/user/month is where large organizations land after adding CPQ, Revenue Intelligence, and Einstein AI features.

For a 20-person sales team on Enterprise, you're looking at $39,600/year for CRM alone. Add admins, ops headcount, and the Salesforce consulting ecosystem that inevitably gets involved, and the real cost is higher.

HubSpot: Free tier, paid from $45/month

HubSpot appears in 48 postings (3.7%). Its presence in VP Sales job descriptions signals early-stage or mid-market companies. HubSpot's free CRM is genuinely functional for small teams. The Sales Hub Professional tier at $450/month for 5 users provides sequences, forecasting, and reporting that covers most needs up to about 30 reps.

The reality for VP Sales candidates: your CRM is almost always chosen before you arrive. Salesforce orgs don't switch to HubSpot. HubSpot orgs sometimes migrate to Salesforce as they scale. Knowing both platforms makes you viable across more of the market.

Sales Engagement

Outreach at 65 mentions ($100-$150/user/month) is the category leader in executive sales postings by a wide margin. Second place in this category is Salesloft at $75-$125/user/month, which doesn't surface separately in our posting data but competes directly for the same budgets.

This is where your reps live day to day. Sequences, cadences, call tasks, email tracking, meeting scheduling. The sales engagement platform is the operational core of outbound activity. When reps complain about "too many tools," they usually mean the engagement platform has too many features they're not using, or too few integrations with the tools they actually need.

For smaller teams, Reply.io at roughly $60/user/month and Instantly at $30/month provide the basics at lower cost. They're missing some of the analytics depth and CRM integration polish of Outreach and Salesloft, but for a 5-person SDR team running outbound, they work.

Budget math for a 20-person team on Outreach: $24,000-$36,000/year. On Salesloft: $18,000-$30,000/year. The difference is meaningful but rarely the deciding factor. Both platforms have strong Salesforce integrations, competent analytics, and similar workflow automation capabilities. The choice usually comes down to which one the team already knows.

Conversation Intelligence

Gong appears in just 4 of 1,298 postings. That number undersells the tool's actual market penetration by a wide margin. Gong has massive brand recognition in B2B sales. Most companies using it don't list it in job descriptions because it's assumed infrastructure rather than a required proficiency.

Gong: $100-$150/user/month

Call recording, deal intelligence, pipeline analytics, coaching insights. Gong has expanded well beyond its original call recording use case into forecasting, deal boards, and AI-generated summaries. For a 20-person team, the annual cost runs $24,000-$36,000.

Chorus.ai (now part of ZoomInfo)

Chorus was acquired by ZoomInfo in 2021 and is now bundled into ZoomInfo's platform. If you're already paying for ZoomInfo, conversation intelligence comes included. That bundling dynamic matters for budget conversations because it changes the cost calculus for teams evaluating Gong standalone vs. ZoomInfo's combined offering.

Sybill and the New Wave

Sybill, Fireflies.ai, and similar tools represent the newer end of this category. Sybill's differentiator is automatic CRM field updates from call analysis, which directly addresses the biggest pain point in sales operations: reps not updating Salesforce. Pricing runs lower than Gong, typically $40-$60/user/month. For teams where CRM hygiene is the primary problem, tools like Sybill deliver more immediate ROI than full-featured conversation intelligence platforms.

This category is growing fast. AI capabilities are expanding what these tools can do every quarter. The question isn't whether to have conversation intelligence. It's how much you need to spend to get the features that matter for your team's specific gaps.

Data and Enrichment

ZoomInfo at 5 mentions ($15,000-$50,000+/year) barely registers in job posting data. Like Gong, its market presence far exceeds its job description mentions. The data enrichment category is where the most money gets wasted in revenue operations because the switching costs are low and the vendor landscape changes constantly.

ZoomInfo: $15,000-$50,000+/year

The incumbent. Contact data, company data, intent signals, and now conversation intelligence via Chorus. ZoomInfo's pricing is contract-based and varies wildly depending on seat count, credit volume, and which modules you buy. A small team might pay $15,000/year. A mid-market company with 50 sales reps and full platform access can easily hit $50,000+.

Apollo: Free tier, from $49/user/month

Apollo has become the default recommendation for teams that don't want to pay ZoomInfo prices. The free tier includes limited contact data and basic sequences. The paid tiers from $49/user/month offer deeper enrichment, more credits, and a built-in engagement layer. For a startup or early-stage company, Apollo can serve as both your data provider and your sales engagement tool in one platform.

Clay: From $149/month

Clay represents the waterfall enrichment approach. Instead of relying on a single data provider, Clay pulls from 75+ data sources and runs enrichment sequentially until it finds the best available data for each contact. The result is typically higher match rates and better data quality than any single source. Pricing starts at $149/month for the platform, with data credits on top.

The trend across this category is clear: away from single-source dependency, toward multi-provider enrichment workflows. ZoomInfo's data isn't always the best data for every prospect. Clay's approach, and similar waterfall tools, reflects how sophisticated RevOps teams actually buy data now.

Forecasting and Pipeline

Clari appears in exactly 1 of 1,298 postings. One. Custom enterprise pricing, typically $20,000-$40,000+/year depending on seats and modules.

That single mention dramatically understates the category's importance. Forecasting tools matter most at scale. A 10-person sales team can forecast in a spreadsheet. A 50-person team with multiple segments, geographies, and product lines needs a system that aggregates pipeline signals, tracks forecast changes over time, and gives the CRO a single view of the quarter.

Three options dominate this space:

• Clari is the standalone leader. Revenue intelligence, pipeline inspection, forecast analytics. The platform ingests CRM data, email signals, and meeting activity to surface deals at risk and forecast accuracy trends.
• Gong has expanded into forecasting aggressively. If you're already paying for Gong's conversation intelligence, its forecasting module adds pipeline analytics without a separate vendor.
• Native Salesforce forecasting has improved substantially. For teams already deep in the Salesforce ecosystem, the built-in forecasting tools (especially with Revenue Intelligence add-ons) can handle the job without another vendor.

If you're running fewer than 50 reps, native CRM forecasting plus disciplined pipeline reviews will get you through. Above 50 reps, a dedicated forecasting tool pays for itself in forecast accuracy alone.

The AI Layer

411 of 1,298 postings (31.7%) mention AI or ML. That makes it the single most referenced technology concept in executive sales job descriptions. GenAI gets specific mention in 21 postings (1.6%).

What does "AI experience" actually mean in a VP Sales posting? In most cases, it means using AI-powered tools. Gong's AI summaries. Clari's predictive analytics. ChatGPT or similar tools for email drafting, research, and content creation. Companies want leaders who are comfortable with AI in their workflow, not leaders who can build AI systems.

AI SDR Tools: The Newest Category

11x, Artisan, AiSDR, and similar platforms represent the hottest investment category in sales technology right now. These tools automate the SDR function, handling prospecting, personalization, outbound sequencing, and initial qualification with AI agents rather than human reps.

The technology is early. Results are mixed. Some companies report meaningful pipeline generation from AI SDRs. Others found that the personalization quality doesn't match a skilled human SDR. The tools improve monthly, and the category is worth watching closely through 2026.

AI Is a Layer, Not a Replacement

The data tells a consistent story. AI is being added on top of existing RevOps tools. Salesforce is adding Einstein AI features. Outreach is adding AI-powered sequence optimization. Gong is adding AI summaries and deal predictions. ZoomInfo is adding AI-driven intent signals. The underlying tool categories remain stable. The AI capabilities are being layered across all of them.

For VP Sales candidates, the practical implication is straightforward: know your core tools well, and be conversant in how each one is deploying AI features. That covers what 31.7% of postings are asking for.

What This Stack Actually Costs

Here's a realistic annual budget for a 20-person sales team running the enterprise RevOps stack.

Category	Tool	Annual Cost (20 users)
CRM	Salesforce Enterprise	$60,000 - $72,000
Sales Engagement	Outreach	$24,000 - $36,000
Conversation Intel	Gong	$24,000 - $36,000
Data / Enrichment	ZoomInfo or Apollo	$15,000 - $50,000
Forecasting	Clari	$20,000 - $40,000
Total		$143,000 - $234,000

That's before implementation, training, admin headcount, and the Salesforce consulting hours that every complex deployment requires. The real all-in cost for a 20-person team's revenue operations infrastructure is closer to $180,000-$280,000 when you include people and services.

The choice between the $143K stack and the $45K stack depends on three things. Team size: larger teams get more value from Salesforce and Clari's enterprise features. Deal complexity: multi-stakeholder, multi-quarter deals need better pipeline analytics. Growth trajectory: if you're scaling from 20 reps to 60 within 18 months, start with the enterprise stack now. Migrating mid-growth is painful and expensive.

What You Can Skip

Not every tool category belongs in every stack. Some are genuinely valuable, but only under specific conditions.

ABM Platforms

Demandbase runs $30,000-$200,000+/year. 6sense is in a similar range. Account-based marketing platforms make sense when your average deal size exceeds $50,000 and your total addressable market is small enough that targeted account coverage works. If you're selling $10,000 ACV deals to a broad market, the math doesn't work. The platform cost per account gets too high relative to the revenue each account generates.

Standalone CPQ

Configure-Price-Quote tools are necessary when you have complex pricing: usage-based, multi-product bundles, volume discounts with approval workflows. If your pricing is straightforward (2-3 tiers, standard discounting), Salesforce's native quoting or even a well-structured spreadsheet template handles it fine. Adding a dedicated CPQ tool for simple pricing creates complexity without proportional value.

Visitor Intelligence

Tools that identify anonymous website visitors (Clearbit Reveal, Leadfeeder, Demandbase's web analytics) are useful when your website gets enough traffic to generate a meaningful volume of identified accounts. If your site gets 5,000 monthly visits, the identified visitor list is too small to build a workflow around. Save this category for when web traffic volume justifies the investment.

Routing and Assignment

LeanData at $39/user/month handles lead-to-account matching and routing. It's excellent for organizations with complex routing rules, multiple segments, and territory overlap. A 20-person team with clean territories doesn't need it. Salesforce assignment rules, or even a shared spreadsheet, cover basic routing without another vendor.

The discipline isn't buying the right tools. It's saying no to tools that solve problems you don't have yet.