SALES OPERATIONS


The Fine-Tuned Sales Ops Team SELLING POWER EDITORS


A sales operations manager and his or her team are expected to be a bit like a modern-day Mary Poppins – able to pull all sorts of tricks out of their bag at a moment’s notice. According to one expert, the sales ops team of the future will need proficiency in all of the following areas.


Process reengineering: “As sales ops takes on an increasingly strategic role,” he says, “the sales ops manag- er and sales ops team will keep mov- ing into such arenas as sales enable- ment and opportunity management, always asking the question, ‘What is the optimal way for this particular process to work?’” Analyst traits: “It’s not enough for CRM systems to spit out data,” he says. “Someone has to understand it, evaluate it, and sort through the


pages of numbers for the most perti- nent information.” Metrics: “Sales ops develops the metrics to measure how well a pro- cess is working and what can be done to improve it.” Sales-automation fluency: “Tech- nology covers a lot of moving parts, such as order management and pricing,” says the expert. “It’s up to sales ops to ask, ‘What is our sales- automation road map?’” Cross-functional experience: Con-


sidering the liaison role sales ops per- forms between different departments, an ideal team would collectively have background experience in strategy, technology, finance, marketing, IT, and sales.


Global experience: “Sales opera-


tions extend beyond the four walls of the sales center,” says the expert. “In order to establish a cohesive sales effort around the world, you need to understand cultural differences.” Communication: “Sales ops has to work with many different depart- ments and often different nationali- ties to do its job,” he adds. “It takes communication skill to understand the goals of a diverse group of de- partments and be able to articulate the objectives in ways that everyone will understand.” Considering all these qualities and


qualifications, a good sales ops team is worth its weight in digital currency or whatever replaces it next. 


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