MANAGEMENT
territories, evaluating compensation, and making sales and marketing align more efficiently,” says the manager. “That way, our salespeople and sales managers can spend time in the field generating revenue.”
The domain of sales ops varies on a company-by-company basis. One worldwide sales operations manager says the position “was developed at her company based strictly on the needs of the VP of sales.” She continues, “He consid- ered my predecessor his right-hand man and wanted him to do audits and research. The position turned into a formal group when we started looking at CRM tools, and, as we’ve taken on more responsibilities – largely tied to data and processes – the group has grown to 15 people.” She sits on a lot of committees in
order to “pull together the pieces.” She explains, “Let’s say we want to goal our people differently. I need to be there to confirm the system can do this. In the process of attend- ing so many meetings, we develop an understanding about how each group works within itself and relates to each other.”
THE INVISIBLE POSITION Sales operations managers may be known by many titles – director of field operations, operations analyst, director of sales ops, manager of global sales operations – and the people who hold these positions may have come to them in various ways. There is no direct career path to become a sales ops manager. We spoke to people who had moved from finance, sales, analysis, or marketing to take the role. Since, as the sales ops manager says, “The sales ops manager has fingers in many pies,” it’s nearly impossible for one person to be an expert in all the areas of required knowledge. Most companies develop a sales opera- tions team composed of people with various skills and backgrounds. Sales ops can also be positioned anywhere. She describes herself as
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working “50 feet from the desk of the VP of sales and 100 feet from the CEO,” and says that 70 percent of her team is likewise at headquar- ters. Some sales ops managers, in contrast, live in the same area as the teams they support, while some are in constant motion – moving around the globe gathering data on the specific concerns and needs of each sales office.
One of the challenges of the position is that it often falls outside the classic corporate structure. In a small company, the sales ops manager may have other leadership roles within the team. In a larger company, it’s generally considered an adjunct position; the sales ops manager might be considered a peer of other managers or perhaps a support person. Either way, the fact that there’s no clear pecking or- der means any directive coming out of sales ops needs to be delivered with tact. “We don’t manage people, and we
can’t bark out orders,” says the sales ops manager. Usually, the sales ops team makes its suggestions to the VP of sales, who delivers, as his or her own, any decisions made on the basis of those suggestions. In this way, it’s a somewhat invisible position.
TACTICAL OR STRATEGIC THINKING?
While sales operations managers call themselves by many names and cover many functions, there’s one thing on which everyone agrees: The position has moved from a tactical focus to a strategic one.
Another expert explains, “Sales ops started as a team whose role was to put out fires wherever they erupted. In time, it’s become more strategic and proactive, with sales ops looking for ways to avoid prob- lems before they arise.” He agrees that the sales ops manager is moving out of the “fire marshal role” and offers two exam- ples of the sort of complex thinking the job now requires. “There’s always
the question of whether or not a company is paying the right salary to the sales force,” he says. “You don’t want to drive people off by under- paying them or locking them into unrealistic quotas, but, at the other end of the spectrum, you don’t want to overpay or set the quotas too low. The sales ops team might look at the overall market, explore what part of it remains untapped, and, on that basis, decide what percentage of that market is realistic for the company to expect to capture. Then that figure is broken into revenue projections by regions and ultimately into individual goals for each salesperson. Fair quo- tas are based off of that.” In an era when more meetings
are virtual and with the sales force attending from hotel rooms, home offices, and cars, it may fall to sales ops to decide which technol- ogy could help the meetings run smoothly and what training the sales force might need to maximize that technology. “There are always some basic questions,” he says. “Are we getting the most out of our people? If not, what do we need to do to help them produce more? The job of the sales ops team is not only to handle the problem that’s right there right now but to project ahead and strategically think what might be needed in the future – how not just to scrape by but to maximize potential.”
“The ultimate goal is to fend off distractions in the field,” says the sales ops manager, “which means removing the obstacles that keep our salespeople from doing what they do best – getting in front of customers and closing sales. We look at the day in the life of a sales- person and ask ourselves how we maximize the amount of time sales- people spend in front of customers and minimize the amount of time they spend handling account issues. Our actions are aimed toward one strategic goal: streamlining the interruptions and reports, making it easier for our people to sell.”
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