Every January, the same conversation comes up.

Budgets are approved. Roadmaps are half-formed. Leadership wants “better ROI from our tools.” And Revenue Ops is sitting in the middle, trying to make sense of a tech stack that’s grown faster than the processes supporting it.

Maximizing tech spend in Q1 isn’t about buying smarter tools. Most teams already own more than they fully use. The real work is deciding what’s worth doubling down on, what needs to be cleaned up, and what should quietly stop costing money this year.

Here’s how experienced RevOps teams start the year off right.

Start With the Question Everyone Avoids: What’s Actually Working?

Before talking about new investments, you need clarity on what’s already earning its keep.

Not what could work. Not what looked good in the sales demo. What’s actively helping sales close deals faster, helping marketing generate pipeline, or helping service retain customers.

That means taking an honest look at:

• Which Salesforce features are being used daily versus occasionally
• Where manual work still exists despite automation
• Which tools your teams actively avoid

This is where most tech waste lives — not in bad tools, but in tools that never fully made it into how teams operate.

Data Problems Will Eat Your Budget Faster Than Bad Tools

If there’s one lesson RevOps keeps relearning, it’s this: you don’t have a tooling problem if you have a data problem.

Disconnected systems, inconsistent definitions, and duplicate records quietly undermine every investment layered on top of them. This is why Salesforce has pushed so hard on Data 360 (formerly Data Cloud) as the foundation for modern revenue teams.

Data 360 is designed to unify customer and operational data across Salesforce and external systems so teams are working from the same reality. Salesforce outlines how this works in their explanation of how Data 360 connects and activates data across the platform.

From a RevOps standpoint, this isn’t exciting work — but it’s the work that makes everything else viable. AI, automation, forecasting, personalization — none of it performs well without a clean, governed data layer.

Stop Paying for Flexibility You Don’t Use

One of the most common Q1 discoveries is how much tech spend goes toward optionality instead of outcomes.

Extra licenses “just in case.” Add-ons that only one team knows how to use. Features purchased because leadership wanted future flexibility that never materialized.

This is where Revenue Ops earns its keep. You’re the function that can look across teams and say, “We don’t actually need three ways to do this.”

Standardization isn’t restrictive — it’s what makes automation and scale possible.

When workflows are consistent, platforms like Salesforce can actually do what they’re designed to do.

Be Selective About AI and Automation

AI is everywhere right now, and Salesforce is no exception.

With Agentforce, Salesforce has moved beyond basic automation into autonomous agents that can take action across sales, service, and marketing workflows. Salesforce positions Agentforce as a way to deploy digital labor that operates inside your CRM using trusted data and permissions, as outlined on the Agentforce product page.

But here’s the part RevOps teams need to own: not everything should be automated.

The right approach isn’t “Where can we use AI?”
It’s “Where does automation remove friction without introducing risk?”

Agentforce works best when it’s layered onto clear processes and unified data, not messy handoffs or loosely defined rules. When done right, it reduces busywork and improves consistency. When rushed, it just creates faster mistakes.

We break this down well in our perspective on how Agentforce and unified data can support RevOps workflows without over-automating decision points.

Focus Spend Where Revenue Actually Slows Down

If you want tech spend to pay off, invest where revenue stalls.

For many teams, that’s not lead generation — it’s quoting, approvals, and contracting.

Salesforce’s Revenue Cloud, now evolving into Agentforce Revenue Management, brings pricing, quoting, contracting, and revenue recognition into a single lifecycle. Salesforce outlines how Revenue Cloud supports this end-to-end process on their Revenue Cloud overview page.

For RevOps, this is one of those areas where the ROI conversation is straightforward:

• Faster quotes
• Fewer errors
• Cleaner revenue data
• Shorter time to cash

Not every team needs this immediately, but teams that struggle with deal velocity almost always see impact here.

Integrations Are a Hidden Cost Center

Every integration looks reasonable on its own. Together, they become a maintenance nightmare.

Sync failures. Data mismatches. Finger-pointing between vendors.

Q1 is the right time to ask:

• Which integrations are mission-critical?
• Which ones exist because “that’s how we’ve always done it”?
• What can be consolidated into native platform capabilities?

Simplifying integrations doesn’t just reduce spend — it improves reliability and trust in your data.

Tie Spend to Outcomes, Not Adoption

One of the biggest mistakes teams make is celebrating adoption instead of impact.

A dashboard being used isn’t success. A workflow running isn’t success.

Success is:

• Better forecast accuracy
• Higher conversion rates
• Shorter sales cycles
• Improved retention

Revenue Ops should be the function translating tech usage into business outcomes. If a tool can’t be tied to a metric leadership cares about, it’s at risk — and probably should be.

Build in Review Cycles Now, Not Later

The best RevOps teams don’t wait until budget season to evaluate spend.

They schedule quarterly reviews that look at:

• Cost versus utilization
• Utilization versus impact
• Impact versus goals

This cadence makes it easier to course-correct mid-year and prevents tech sprawl from quietly returning.

Final Thought

Maximizing tech spend in 2026 isn’t about buying less or buying more. It’s about being intentional.

Clean up what you already own. Fix the data foundation. Automate carefully. Invest where revenue actually gets stuck. And measure success in business outcomes, not features.

If you want help pressure-testing your tech stack, data model, or automation strategy, Revenue Ops LLC works with revenue teams to make Salesforce and adjacent tools actually support how the business runs.