Stacie Sussman

CRO l We're the all-star team that'll actually increase your bottom line revenue l Business Strategy l Operations l Sales l Marketing l Revenue Growth

After 17 years in media sales, I thought success meant grinding harder and steering the ship alone.

Then I looked around at the CROs I admired—brilliant, well-paid executives who looked… haggard. Burnt out. Like they’d lost their spark somewhere between board meetings and impossible targets.

That’s when it hit me: the system was broken. And I’d lived it.

I spent those 17 years running into obstacles that shouldn’t have existed, feeling like a one-woman show when sales should have been a team sport. I watched talented leaders march in place, trying the same patch-job solutions while the real problems—misaligned departments, broken attribution, CROs and CMOs working against each other—went unfixed.

For the past 7+ years, my team and I have been fixing foundations, not symptoms.

At RevUp Advisory, we take B2B businesses from duct-taped growth to marketing and sales alignment that actually works. We create cohesion between departments that have been at war, align everything with executive vision, and build operational excellence that turns chaos into consistent revenue.

Here’s the truth: we often rip out bad consulting work first. Everyone says they can drive more sales. But saying it and delivering sustainable results? Two very different things.

The transformation? Those scathing emails from bosses stop coming. Pipeline reports finally line up. Attribution makes sense. And instead of being seen as “that hopeless department,” you’re respected as the strategic partner you always were.

Because here’s what I’ve learned: companies should work smarter, not harder. And when you fix the foundation instead of patching the cracks, everyone gets their spark back.

Ready to stop the patch-jobs and actually scale? 

Let’s talk: stacie@revupadvisory.com

CRO - Revenue - Sales - Marketing - Operations - Business Strategy - Growth Plans - Customer Journey - Salesforce - HubSpot - Enablement - Training - OKRs - KPIs - Tech Stack - Pipeline - Forecasting - Sales Operations - Marketing Operations - Revenue Operations- B2B - Founders - CRO - CMO - CRM  - Pricing - Revenue Modeling - Sales Funnel - Marketing Funnel - Customer Success - Foundational Structure - ICP - CAC - LTVC - ARR - MRR - Fundraising - Leadership Consulting - Management Consulting - Sales Coaching - Compensation Planning - Workshops - Training - AI Agents - Process Optimizations - Flows - Automations - Tech Stack

Founding Member

The Upside is a curated, global community for consultants and industry experts.

My accountability partners just served me my own advice. And it stung.

Picture this: I’m in our group meeting two years ago, celebrating another client win. We’d just helped a mid-market company build this incredible scalable GTM strategy.

My partners stop me: “Stacie, you always tell clients to pick the right channels and scale them. But what about YOU?”

Ouch.

Here I was, building go-to-market strategies for companies, helping them move beyond one conversation at a time… while RevUp Advisory  was stuck in exactly that mode.

One Zoom. One call. One connection at a time.

The irony? I was literally solving this problem for clients every day. That wake-up call changed everything. 

We took our LinkedIn Live content and strategically expanded to our C-Suite Strategies podcast and Substack newsletter.

Now we’re having meaningful conversations with hundreds of leaders simultaneously instead of one at a time.

The DMs and emails we get prove it’s working: “I couldn’t describe my attribution problem until your episode gave me the language and process I needed.”

Here’s what I’ve learned about support systems…The best ones don’t just cheer you on. 

They hold up a mirror and force you to face the gap between what you preach and what you practice.

Sometimes the most uncomfortable truth from your network becomes the catalyst for your biggest breakthrough.

Grateful for the people who care enough to call me out and push me to grow outside your comfort zone. 

What uncomfortable truth is your support system serving you that you’ll be grateful you acted on?

CRO | Fixing Marketing & Sales Alignment That Stalls Revenue | Marketing Ops l Sales Ops l AI + Process Optimization l Revenue Growth

No alternative text description for this image

I used to roll my eyes at “find work you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Total BS, right?

Picture this, I’m in my Upper East Side apartment. I’m dragging two dining room chairs into my bedroom because it’s the only quiet space away from kids, nanny, and chaos.

Sitting across from my “in-house Wendy” (think Billions), mapping out how to escape 17 years of corporate sales hell.

Every day felt like Groundhog Day → subway downtown → sales calls → spreadsheets → mani-pedis → dinners → repeat. 

Someone else was raising my kids while I chased quotas for companies that didn’t listen to my ideas.

I was trying for baby #2, but my schedule wasn’t my own. 

The company was circling bankruptcy (spoiler: they did go under). 

And I kept thinking: “If I have to start over at another media agency, calling on planners getting younger while I’m getting older… I may just poke my eyes out.”

The financial pressure was crushing. 
The fear was real. 

But sitting in those bedroom planning sessions, something shifted.

What if I bet on myself instead?

Three clients lined up. Boom we were off!

Then COVID hit a year later.

There was relief. Terror. Scarcity mindset screaming “WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?”

But also this fierce determination, “I am going to make this work come hell or high water.”

Here’s what I discovered about that cheesy quote about loving your work? It’s not BS.

RevUp Advisory became bigger than I ever imagined. We don’t just change revenue trajectories → we change lives. 

The consulting work, the impact, the legacy… it all started in a bedroom with two dining room chairs and a woman who refused to stay stuck.

To anyone sitting in their own version of corporate Groundhog Day….your ideas matter too. Your brain power is being underutilized. And sometimes the scariest leap leads to the most extraordinary landing.

What’s your version of those bedroom planning sessions? 

What are you mapping out for your next chapter? Let’s hear it.

I haven’t told my LinkedIn hive this, but I have a confession. I’m a roller blader.

My uncle bought me my first pair when I was a kid during our annual summer California visits. Blue and white with pink laces. He was the fun uncle—the one who’d say yes to adventures.

Fast forward multiple decades and I find myself
in a Florida ski store looking for something my son and I could do together. 

And when I found the coral-pink Rollerblade skates that felt like destiny. Those memories of learning how to skate in Venice Beach came flooding back. 

But here’s what happened next. I’m ready for this grand rollerblade adventure and my son started complaining halfway through our rides. 

That’s when I realized this thing we could do together? Could just be something I could do. At my own pace. My own rhythm.

And oh my god, it’s the best feeling ever. I’m gliding with music in my ears, not thinking about much of anything. Getting lost in the trail. 

There’s this sense of joyful freedom that’s completely unmatched.

For years, I thought hobbies were frivolous. That you had to grind through everything on your to-do list first. 

This year I realized that stepping away might be as valuable as stepping back in.

When you do something that feels free and joyful, then return to your challenging problems? You come back with renewed energy. A totally different vantage point that might actually solve the problem.

The philosophy of constantly staying the course is doing the opposite of what we think it’s doing.

What childhood joy are you ready to reclaim? Share in the comments—I’d love to hear your stories.

PS - Here’s me on my favorite rollerblade trail.

The Mr. Rogers sweatshirt that changed how I lead with dignity.  My first job out of college was at Condé Nast Bridal Group. Not the glamorous Vogue side of the company, but a solid revenue maker run by absolute tyrants.

I watched my friend, a fellow sales assistant, get tormented daily by her boss. 

The crime? 

Wearing a Mr. Rogers sweatshirt to work. 

We weren’t making the big salaries, but this woman made my friend feel so small, so worthless, that one evening she just… left. Walked out at 7 PM and never came back.

The rest of us? We watched it happen. 

We couldn’t intervene without risking our own jobs. TBH, we were all scraping together rent in Manhattan.

But I made myself a promise that day. I will never be treated this way. And I will never treat people this way.

Fast forward to today. 

Companies literally pay me to have the tough conversations their leaders can’t handle. 

Last week, I had to tell a client their 17-stage Salesforce process was driving everyone crazy.

The difference? 
I don’t humiliate. 
I educate.

“You’re completely overcomplicating this, and no one is willing to tell you,” I said on our Zoom call. “We’ll be the ones to tell you this doesn’t make sense.”

When they got defensive (they always do), I didn’t double down with ego. I removed the titles, spoke person-to-person, and showed them what “great” looks like when you’ve only known “bad.”

Here’s what I’ve learned about dignity in leadership from those early corporate days. 

The toughest conversations aren’t about being right. They’re about being helpful. 

You can deliver hard truths without destroying people’s humanity.

In 2025 and beyond, leaders who can ask the difficult questions while preserving everyone’s dignity? 

They’re the ones who will build teams that actually want to follow them.

The bullies at CNBG? They got compliance through fear.

I get transformation through respect.

Which leader do you want to be?

December 1st isn’t the time to coast. My boss was breathing down my neck about a massive General Mills deal. They wanted to start in January, but we needed something - ANYTHING - to hit our Q4 numbers.

Most people would’ve accepted “January” and moved on.

Not me. 

When I commit, I go ALL IN.

Picture this scene. I’ve got coffee carts with our logo strategically placed in their office lobby. 

Holiday lunches. Holiday dinners. 

Phone calls up and down the entire media chain. 

I was orchestrating everything while telling my bosses exactly who to call and when to email.

But here’s what made it brutal…

This wasn’t just convincing one person to say yes. 
We needed approvals from the client team, to the head of the media agency, to budget allocation, to the brand team. During the holidays. When half these people are mentally checked out.

There were definitely “holy ****, is this actually worth it?” moments.

But they were RESPONDING. 
Taking our calls. 
Showing up to dinners. 

In my experience, when clients are engaged like that? There’s real potential.

December 19th, the paperwork came through.
7-figure deal. DONE.

Here’s what that deal taught me about sales. 

December isn’t dead money. 

Your prospects haven’t all disappeared. 

There’s still budget sitting in “use it or lose it” policies. 

Onboarding can still happen. Clients can still get serviced.

We’re officially December 1st with about 3 working weeks left before everyone calls it quits.

This is your reminder that it’s still not too late to make something happen.

What’s one deal or opportunity you’ve been putting off until “next year” that you could actually push through right now?

When I stopped being polite and started being truthful.

Week 12. Another status call with a client who’d been “working on” the same simple tasks for three months.

I watched their marketing team squirm as I asked my usual diplomatic question about progress. 

More corporate speak. 
More “we’re prioritizing it.” 
More billable hours with zero results.

That’s when I decided to stop dancing around it.

“Is this tolerable and acceptable within your organization? Are you willing to do something about it, or are you willing to just steer a sinking ship into an iceberg?”

The Zoom went dead silent.

Here’s what I learned about this fast-growing company in that moment. They’d scaled through acquisitions but never upgraded their infrastructure. One person had “volunteered” to build their Salesforce by watching YouTube videos. It worked for a single company… but not for five.

The result? 

Marketing firing on all cylinders, but sales ops held together with digital duct tape and hope.

After my blunt wake-up call, something shifted. 

The embarrassment turned into relief. 

Finally, someone had said what everyone was thinking. “Please save us,” they said. “Tell us how to fix this.”

So I pitched what I’d wanted to propose from day one - the comprehensive overhaul they weren’t ready to hear about initially. The real investment they’d been trying to avoid.

They said yes immediately.

Sometimes being brutally honest is the kindest thing you can do for a client. They were drowning in broken systems, but everyone was too polite to call it what it was.

Stop trying to solve million-dollar problems with thousand-dollar band-aids.

Your team deserves better than digital duct tape.

What conversation have you been avoiding because you’re being too polite? It’s never too late to start this December.

One skill separates successful consultants from completely burned-out ones. Learning to identify reasonable vs unreasonable people.

Here’s what I mean…

When a client’s Salesforce-HubSpot integration breaks down (and trust me, it happens), reasonable clients get it. Yes, it’s frustrating when leads can’t flow from marketing to sales. But they understand our team is working on it, we have SLAs in place, and sometimes complex fixes just take time.

Then there are the unreasonable ones.

You can present facts 17 ways till Sunday. You can bring in multiple people to explain the situation. You can appeal to logic, emotions, whatever. But unreasonable people live in their own warped sense of reality, and you’re NEVER going to get through to them.

I learned this the hard way in my corporate days. 

Had a boss who would “yes” me to death when I asked for coaching, feedback, or career advancement opportunities. But when promotion time came? Crickets. If you’re asking to be developed and someone won’t give you real feedback OR help move your career forward, that’s textbook unreasonable behavior.

Here’s what I’ve learned from two decades in corporate. Unreasonable people are like cancer in your organization. They suck the life and energy out of everything they touch.

That’s exactly why we built a “no-a**hole policy” at RevUp Advisory. 

After working with countless unreasonable people, I decided if we’re going to build one of the best consulting firms out there, we only work with reasonable people.

Setting boundaries on what you’ll tolerate isn’t just nice-to-have—it’s business critical.

What’s your experience? Have you worked with unreasonable colleagues or clients who drained your energy no matter what you did? 

Share your stories below.

PhilanthropyOps

Offering fractional support, interim work, mentorship, consulting, and wealth screening services to grow your fundraising results.

- Specialize in philanthropy data, database, and operations for small to midsize philanthropy offices. 

PhilanthropyOps was founded with proven results that better data, optimized prospecting, and strong operations drives fundraising success.

Founder and Chief Philanthropy Operations Officer (CPOO)

We Are For Good

A membership of changemakers who are shifting the world - for good.
www.impactuprising.com

Founding Member of Impact Uprising

The Outlier Project

Member Choosing Extraordinary

DIY Influence | Thought Leadership Community

Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation

Grateful to have the ability to serve weekly at PCRF to partner with frontline fundraisers who are raising money to help children facing childhood cancer beat their disease and realize their full potential.  Plus, it’s extra special as I grew up in Orange County CA so when we talk about the towns and places that support the mission, it’s very familiar.

Reporting to the CEO and leading the development operations area focusing on oversight of the CRM, data integrity, prospect management, data, analtyics, gift entry, training, and process optimization.

Highlights so far:

→ Cleansed data to improve integrity and flow into various pipelines.

→ Built out and configured CRM database, completely revamping page layouts and screens to simplify and make more intutive for frontline users.

→ Conducted a 5-year historical giving analysis and predicted future giving based on average increases year over year.

→ Built out data feeds and database to launch and support major giving prospecting efforts.

→ Optimized workflows to align with donor-centric fundraising efforts.

Director of Development Operations (Fractional Support)

Easterseals NH

Being able to support a meaningful mission 2 days a week who is changing the way the world defines and views disability is super inspiring. 

Reporting to the CDO and leading efforts around the fundraising data, database, and operational best practices to boost philanthropy efforts at multiple locations. With the first phone call "You are a gift and I must hire you," and I've proved to be the gift that keeps on giving. It's an honor and so much fun to help here.

Highlights so far:

→ Dove in and did gift processing to catch up from being 3-months behind.

→ Conducted a development operations discovery/analysis and provided an action plan for us to tackle together.

→ Identified data integrity projects that should be completed to enhance fundraising efforts and leading efforts to do these.

→ Conducted a 10-year historical giving analysis and predicted future giving based on average increases year over year.

→ Built out data feeds and database to launch and support major giving, corporate, and grant prospecting efforts.

→ Coaching and mentoring two new development operations team members.

→ Building process optimization and workflows to ensure your efforts are optimized and streamlined.

→ Aligning data and operational efforts to frontline fundraising strategies.

Development Operations Lead (Fractional Support)

Orbis International

The relationship started with a referral, a trusted mutual connection who put us in touch. When I got on the phone to discuss their needs, I asked, “When are you looking to start,” and the response was, "Last week."

The ask: They needed help moving short-term and longer-term data and database projects forward as they embarked on launching a development operations area across the organization.

The solution: Provide fractional support 1-2 days a week to complete these projects. As I was full, I was honest with them only being able to start at 1 day a week and then later extended to 2 days a week and quickly become an integral part of the Development Operations team reporting to the Director of Dev Ops.

Outcomes so far:

→ Supported the shift to align donors with CDO's plan of donor segmentation by tagging all existing donors in the database as well as set-up processes for ongoing updates.

→ Designed and implemented moves management tracking in the CRM database and trained fundraisers.

→ Revamped structure for appeals utilization and tracking efforts across various teams.

→ Completed numerous data integrity projects to clean up existing data, coding, and fields in the database. 

→ Fulfilled data requests, mail and email list pulls, and event attendee updates.

→ Worked with finance to set up integration processes between the fundraising database and the financial system.

→ Led training and executed necessary implementations to migrate from an on-prim database to a hosting and web based environment.

Development Operations Manager (Fractional Support)

AMDA College and Conservatory of the Performing Arts

It is truly special to have been a part of a meaningful endeavor and inspiring mission alongside genuinely good and invested nonprofit individuals.

Served as their Philanthropy Operations lead and built a development operations arm from the ground up taking all the right steps to launch most effectively and at the right time.

Guided the team through launching philanthropy operations that aligned strategically to frontline fundraising efforts. This involved leading 22 module-driven weekly sessions that I developed to educate, support, and launch best practices with data, database, operational processes, guidelines, and workflows to ensure the team was ready for the launch of their fundraising efforts.

Highlights:

→ Educated and trained new staff to fundraising on managing the data managing the CRM database.

→ Configured and set up the data flows, CRM database, and operational processes.

→ Built the data structure and flows to collect, maintain, and steward donors and prospects.

→ Taught on and built out the Ambassador and Influencer programs to receive referrals from various key stakeholders.

→ Partnered with finance to educate on development efforts and the necessary protocols to handling donations.

→ Participated in interviews for the new development operations coordinator and mentored her as she came on board.

→ Supported team through setting up donation pages and receiving initial gifts.

Philanthropy Operations Lead (Fractional Support)

YMCA of Greater Brandywine

To be given the opportunity to help a place that helps kids and families is inspiring, especially as it was where I brought my kids to as they were growing up. 

I was brought in to help fill a gap in data and operations and get processes, workflows, and systems up to speed with best practices and operational efficiency. As we aligned to new strategic plans, I served as a team member of the philanthropy division 2 days a week and dove into the weeds to get work done while also coaching and mentoring an up-and-coming philanthropy operations amazing professional.

Highlights:

→ Provided updates to President & CEO along with supply high-level bullet points on data and progress.

→ Led database training sessions for leadership, gift officers, and development services.

→ Supported the onboarding of the new VP for Philanthropy and the new Development Services Manager.

→ Provided multiple reports around donors and giving, past and present.

→ Fielded multiple questions around reconciliation processes with finance. Also uncovered a decent
amount of set-up and processes that needed to be updated to align with best practices.

→ Taught and trained on best practices around data, gift processing, prospecting, database configurations, and operational workflows.

→ Completed the setup of running Digital Recognition monthly.

→ Completed the setup of an acknowledgment process based on the Stewardship Matrix.

Dr. Susan Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research

I remember the night I received a LinkedIn DM saying, "I reached out to my old database expert for help, and she said call Jenny, so here I am, we need help." I talked with the team the next day and we started work together one week later.

The ask: Audit, review, fix, and enhance the data, database and workflows based on best practices.

The solution: Provide fractional support 2 days a week to fix the prior three months of gift processing and establish processes for data flows, database management, and operational workflows for long-term success.

Highlights:

→ Conducted a review of gifts entered the prior 3 months and corrected entries for 650 gifts, as well as found and entered 152 missing gifts.

→ Designed a converter to automate the process of importing online/Classy gifts into Raiser's Edge.

→ Performed data integrity and cleansing on over 650 records.

→ Worked with finance to set up an effective process to reconcile gifts at the end of each month.

→ Created process and trained team on running acknowledgement letters and tribute notifications.

→ Completed a wealth screening of the entire database.

→ The contract was extended beyond the initial 3 months to lead efforts for their gift processing, acknowledgements, list pulls, and reporting.

→ Lastly, helped them sunset the Foundation and performed data migration of database records and gifts to another database.

Philanthropy Operations Director (Fractional Support)

With a career devoted to problem-solving for good, Jenny has helped over 120 nonprofits strengthen their data, database, and operations while improving cross-functional relationships between teams.

✨Jenny worked at various nonprofits before going into consulting. Then, after six years of consulting at a mass scale, she started her own company to provide boutique-style services to small to midsized nonprofits to have a greater impact where it is needed most. As the founder of PhilanthropyOps, Jenny provides boutique-style fractional support, consulting, and wealth screening services and enjoys spending time mentoring at scale. She empowers you to enhance your philanthropy data, database, and operations for better fundraising success.

✨Jenny has worked with over 120 nonprofit organizations ranging in yearly revenue from $2M to $200M. She has trained thousands of individuals across all fundraising areas and has led teams of up to 15.

✨She also has a soft spot for teaching and supporting introverts to learn to become more extroverted and effectively interact with leaders, as she has widely benefited by embracing these learnings. There are three reasons why Jenny has found this vital:
  1) It builds better and stronger relationships with being in a service-oriented profession, 
  2) End users embrace the tech more when teaching non-tech folks how to use the database, and 
  3) The approach has been much more effective from interacting with and being to go-to for CEOs and CDOs.

✨Her extensive background in philanthropy data, databases, operations, and technology informs her leadership, speaking, and writing. Jenny inspires and adds humor and approachability as fundraising evolves and innovates. Her talks address the future of fundraising, the intersection of data, tech, and people, supporting rising professionals, donor-centric operations, and how to hyper-personalize and hyper-connect to enable real fundraising results. 

Jenny has been described as an expert, strong collaborator, team builder, optimist, and innovator, and she is passionate about mentoring and helping others. Her leadership is evident in her methods and experiences; she believes in teamwork and uplifting positivity. She has volunteered for the Association of Advancement Services Professionals and posts content to help others. Notably, she held LinkedIn's Top Fundraising Voice in 2023 & 2024 and Top Philanthropy Voice in 2024.

➡ Reach out to invite Jenny to speak or inquire about engaging PhilanthropyOps for your fundraising operation's needs.

taplio

The Battle

Stacie Sussman

Jenny Kleintop

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreStacie Sussman's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Stacie Sussman

Jenny Kleintop

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Stacie Sussman's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreStacie Sussman's LinkedIn Performance