what is sales operations?

I was recently asked for a “here’s what sales ops really does primer” that I thought I would share:

The mandate of Sales Operations is to ensure the efficient and effective running of the day-to-day operations of sales.

In particular, preparing people and partners to sell effectively, ensure the smooth flow of a deal through the internal systems, provide access to information and maintain data integrity. Typically, Sales Operations is hard line to the VP of World Wide Sales and dotted line to the Chief Operating Officer (who is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the company). There are five major responsibilities for sales operations:

Data Capture

• Central database which captures the following: customer information, competitive information, order details, product and sku details, date (fiscal and calendar), headcount, financial, territories.
• Data cleansing which promotes control totals, accuracy and disclaimers for users.
• Order Entry - this function promotes the accuracy of information as captured in the CRM/Financial system.

Report and Query

• Adhoc query
• Standard report generation for sales and executive team
• Forecasting, metrics and analysis
• Productivity reporting
• The goal is not to provide thousands of reports but a few quality reports that focus on measuring success and weakness and provide analysis and recommendation for course correction

Training

• Sales Training typically captures ‘a day in the life of …’ to prepare the sales force and maximize productivity. General training components include:

• - Organizational culture and processes
• - Product demonstrations and key feature sets
• - Market review and target customer profile
• - Selling Methodology (e.g. Miller Heiman)
• - ROI Sales Pitch/Value proposition
• - How to process an order (from prospect, to legal paperwork, to financial assessment, to fulfillment).
• - Revenue forecasting methodology and revenue recognition
• - CRM system review
• - Compensation plan review

Sales Tools

• Although Sales Operations is not responsible for the creation of sales tools they are responsible for providing a central resource for sales to access and working with other business units to create effective tools for sales. Typical tools that should be in a central repository include:

• - Email templates
• - Pricing, licensing, and sku’s
• - Call scripts
• - Lead qualification documents
• - Demo scripts
• - Product and marketing tools and fact sheets
• - RFP/RFI templates and boilerplate responses
• - All information provided in training sessions

Commissions

• This is the sole point of contact for queries regarding sales compensation. This person works with Payroll, Finance, Legal, HR and Sales to create, administer and maintain the sales commission plan for each individual.
• Pull data, calculate the commission, work with sales for accuracy, communicate payment to payroll and provide a commission statement to each employee.

Like operations in general, this team must coordinate and work with all business units to provide the resources to promote an efficient, well functioning sales team so that sales reps and management can focus on the task of closing business.
In addition to the above ‘primer’ I provided, I’d like to stress the importance of not only achieving the practical side of the mandate but also the manner for which it is executed on. Operations is a key role (the ambassador for sales) as it works with all the other business units to achieve success and therefore demands a personality type that can: ask questions, think quickly, consider many options and solutions and promote the best outcome without ego, manage the message, have thick skin and be diplomatic in delivery/communication. This may seem like a recipe for the ‘perfect person’ but for such a key role it is a requirement … it is why it is so hard to find great sales ops candidates.

Finally, it takes years to build a world class sales ops program. I think the question is not what needs to be built but what needs to be built in the next year and with what resources. Everything is a function of time and resources.