Welcome to CC: Commission Chats, the series where we mine hard‑won lessons from people who keep revenue engines humming. Today’s guest, Adi Amir, is Revenue & Business Operations Specialist for the fast‑paced SMB segment at Kaltura, the video‑experience platform trusted by universities and enterprises worldwide. A former legal‑ops lead who pivoted into RevOps, Adi pairs process rigor with GTM creativity to squeeze maximum value from every lead—and every renewal dollar.
From Courtrooms to Quotas: Why Legal Ops Made a Perfect Launchpad
Most career pivots happen gradually, but Adi says hers “felt completely natural.” Legal work sharpened her eye for risk and compliance; RevOps gave her “a direct line to revenue impact.” That blend lets her translate regulatory nuance into GTM reality: “I completely understand where legal is coming from—I’ve been in their shoes, so projects start with instant trust.”
Takeaway: Strategic thinking gets you invited to the revenue table; credibility with compliance keeps the deal moving once you’re there.
Herding Cats? Start With a Shared Vision
RevOps sits at the crossroads of Sales, CSM, Marketing and Product, each with its own scoreboard. The hardest part, Adi admits, is reconciling KPI clashes: “Every department has its own KPIs—and sometimes they conflict. My job is to create a shared visible dashboard so everyone sees the same finish line.”
Her playbook begins by documenting project goals, owners and success metrics on Day 1, then holding weekly “one‑page stand‑ups” where each team updates status in the same template. It sounds simple—but she credits the ritual with slashing project‑cycle friction by “at least a third.”
The SMB Lead‑to‑Meeting Machine
Kaltura’s SMB desk drowns in inbound interest—great for pipeline, deadly for rep bandwidth. Adi mapped the end‑to‑end funnel and saw one variable trump everything else: channel engagement. Leads that chatted with a bot or requested a demo converted far more often than those who merely downloaded a white paper.
So her team built an automation that:
- Tags every lead with its originating channel.
- Auto‑books a meeting for “high‑intent” channels (demo, chat, branded Google searches).
- Defers lower‑intent leads to nurtures until they re‑engage.
The result? Qualified meetings jumped, and reps closed more deals without hiring extra SDRs.
Why Traditional Scoring Took a Back Seat
Classic point‑based scoring still lives in Kaltura’s CRM, but Adi disabled its gatekeeping power for SMB. “Scoring works for enterprise, not for this velocity motion. We watch the channel first, score second.”
That single philosophical shift removed false negatives (high‑intent prospects with low digital footprints) and kept the calendar full.
Turning “Money on the Floor” Into a Playbook: The Renewal Project
If you think new business is hard, Adi argues, look at the easy money most companies ignore: “It’s amazing how much revenue is just lying there in renewals. Streamline the process and it’s like picking money off the floor.”
Her audit uncovered wild inconsistency in organic uplifts. She dug into retention data, uplift histories and contract language, then shipped a Renewal Blueprint that standardized:
- Notification timelines
- Negotiation guardrails
- Approval thresholds for price increases
- Upsell/cross‑sell talk tracks
The “bomb,” as she calls it, boosted renewal ARR without sacrificing NPS and quickly spread beyond the SMB pod.
AI: Hype, Help—or Hazard?
Adi loves tools that wipe out grunt work—reporting, CRM updates, quote creation—but she’s clear‑eyed about the guardrails: “Even with automation everywhere, humans must continuously supervise; you can’t 100 % trust AI.”
Her rule of thumb: automate only repeatable steps, build alerting for edge cases, and review dashboards weekly to catch drift before it snowballs.
Leading With People Skills
Process chops matter, but Adi insists soft skills carry more weight: “Technical skills can be learned; the personal skills and people skills are the most important in every situation.”
She schedules “office hours” for frontline reps, treats resistance as a user‑research signal, and credits those habits for making change‑management battles “a lot less bloody.”
Go‑To Resources
- RevOps Co‑op – A growing network that shares best practices and job leads.
- Wizards of Ops – Tactical Slack wisdom on process design.
- RevGenius – Broader GTM community with eclectic webinars.
Key Takeaways
- Channel > Score for high‑velocity SMB funnels.
- One Renewal Blueprint can add more ARR than a new‑logo hunt.
- Shared dashboards neutralise KPI turf wars.
- AI is a co‑pilot, not an auto‑pilot—review the flight path weekly.
- Soft skills scale hard processes.
Commission Corner 🏆
While Adi’s story zeroes in on process and automation, her Renewal Blueprint has a direct, powerful ripple effect on variable pay:
- Predictable earnings for CSMs/AMs – When uplift percentages, approval paths and negotiation windows are standardised, reps know exactly which actions unlock extra commission. No more “random‑quota roulette.”
- Lower shadow accounting – Clear guardrails reduce the post‑period disputes that often plague renewal‑based comp plans, letting Finance approve payouts faster.
- Built‑in incentive to upsell – By baking cross‑sell targets into the playbook (and comp plan), Kaltura turns routine contract renewals into incremental ARR hunts—aligning rep behaviour with company growth.
The lesson? You don’t always need an exotic commission accelerator to drive results; sometimes the biggest lift comes from tightening the process that your existing plan already rewards.
This interview is part of the ongoing CC: Commission Chats series. For more interviews, and other content related to RevOps, compensation, and sales, head over to the Everstage Blog now!
