GTM Ops is Mission Control

I was on a call with a client's ops lead walking through her lead routing process. Manually assigning leads, checking data, making sure nothing falls through.

"I'm just kind of like the air traffic controller to make sure everything's in the loop."

Air traffic controller. Exactly right. Though she said it like it was no big deal.

What your ops lead is actually doing

Think about what air traffic control does. They're tracking dozens of moving objects, each with different speeds, destinations, and constraints. They're making real-time decisions that affect safety, timing, and efficiency. They're coordinating between pilots, ground crews, and other controllers. All while maintaining calm.

Now think about your GTM Ops lead.

They're managing your CRM, your marketing automation platform, your sales engagement tools, your data enrichment vendors, and whatever else has been bolted onto your tech stack over the years. They're making sure leads flow from marketing to sales without getting lost, duplicated, or misrouted. They're building reports you actually trust. They're coordinating between teams with competing priorities.

And they're doing this while everyone else focuses on closing deals and hitting targets.

When it works, no one notices. That's the problem.

The cost of "no one notices"

When GTM Ops runs well, it's invisible. That invisibility often leads to underinvestment. And underinvestment leads to:

Your best ops person buried in manual work instead of building systems

Workarounds that become permanent

Data issues that compound quietly until they blow up a forecast

Handoffs that break when volume increases

That client I talked to? She knew exactly which parts of her process needed automation. She felt the friction daily. She knew which workaround was temporary and which one was a ticking time bomb. She just didn't have the bandwidth to fix it because she was too busy keeping everything running.

The question to ask

Is your GTM Ops lead building infrastructure or just keeping the lights on?

If the answer is "keeping the lights on," that's not a staffing problem. That's a strategy problem.

When GTM Ops is an afterthought, things fall apart. When it's a priority, things run.

Your GTM Ops lead isn't support staff. They're mission control. Treat them accordingly, or bring in help so they can do the work that actually scales.