Tag: Sales Ops

Revenue operations vs Sales operations

To supercharge your business against your competition, there’s one aspect of prime importance that plays a crucial role – how good your operations are. Among all the operations in your business, two major ones that drive growth are Revenue Operations (RevOps) and Sales Operations (SalesOps). While they focus on different areas, they share a common goal – streamlining processes and operations so your core team can focus on what matters most: achieving their goals and tracking key metrics for success. Both RevOps and SalesOps are accountable for key metrics and KPIs, such as sales metrics, that drive predictable revenue and sales productivity and growth, including forecast accuracy. However, in order to truly optimize sales performance, it is important to have a well-developed sales operations strategy in place. This involves identifying key areas for improvement, implementing effective tools and processes, and continuously analyzing and adjusting based on key metrics and best practices. By building a strong sales operations strategy, businesses can ensure long-term success and growth in their sales operations. In this blog, we simplify the understanding of RevOps vs SalesOps. By the end of this blog you will be able to: Differentiate between the two and their functions Identify what is of prime importance for you at the moment – RevOps or SalesOps Understand when to hire a RevOps or a SalesOps team Revenue operations vs. Sales operations What is SalesOps? There’s one primary goal of creating a SalesOps team – to minimize the mundane administrative tasks for your sales reps so they can focus on one thing they have to – sell more. This team, made up of sales professionals and sales managers, focuses on optimizing in processes, technologies, and performance metrics to enhance sales efficiency and productivity. They work along with sales leadership and sales leaders, but away from the sales team that focuses on closing deals, allowing sales ops professionals to focus on their strengths and ultimately drive sales strategy. How SalesOps Works SalesOps work with one primary goal in mind – making the lives of sales reps better. They take over all mundane and administrative chores away from sales folks so they can work on what they’re best at – closing deals. They are responsible for creating a direction for the sales team so the sales process becomes more optimized. Here’s what they work on: Focus on territory mapping and offering tech stack support. Identify and implement KPIs for the sales team as a whole. Create training for new sales reps and prep them to be up and running along with the existing sales team. Identify areas of automation so repetitive tasks of sales reps are automated so they can sell faster. Define a standard sales process so the sales team has a vision and a direction to work on. What is Revenue Operations? RevOps, or Revenue Operations, aims to break down silos between departments so that all teams can collaborate effectively to remove barriers to profitability. It exists to drive revenue growth by enhancing the operational efficiency of the revenue team. In simpler terms, RevOps helps your teams work together more efficiently, providing a better, more profitable service to your clients. How RevOps Works RevOps functions a bit differently for each company, but it generally starts by: Setting Shared Goals: Aligning all customer-facing departments with common objectives. Unified Tech Stack: Integrating data from all departments into a single tech platform. Identifying Roadblocks: Pinpointing areas that hinder profitability and success. Optimizing Processes: Collaborating to refine processes and procedures to eliminate these obstacles. When to Hire Sales Operations Instead of Revenue Operations Choosing between SalesOps and RevOps is a key decision for any company looking to grow. Here are a few signs that indicate you might need to bring in a SalesOps team first: 1. Your CRM is in Disarray If your customer relationship management (CRM) system is chaotic and no one has the bandwidth to clean and manage the data, it’s time to consider SalesOps. They specialize in organizing sales databases and project scheduling. By keeping your CRM in order, SalesOps ensures that your sales team has easy access to the information they need to close deals and build relationships with customers, as well as efficiently onboard new hires and train teams on updated processes. 2. Administrative Tasks Overwhelm Your Team When your sales reps are overwhelmed with administrative tasks, it’s a clear sign that you need a Sales Operations Analyst. Without someone in charge of day-to-day operations and workflows, these responsibilities fall on your sales team, leading to inefficiencies. A Sales Operations Analyst can implement a time-tracking system to better understand how time is spent and make the team more efficient. As a result, your team can focus on their core responsibilities and drive sales strategy, ultimately leading to the growth of your sales organization and business. 3. Lack of Process Ownership If you notice that your processes aren’t as effective as they could be and improvements are not being made, it’s likely because there’s no one responsible for process management. SalesOps can step in to handle this crucial aspect, allowing your sales teams to focus on what they do best—selling. With SalesOps in charge, you can ensure that processes are continuously optimized through sales process optimization, ensuring smooth operations across all business units. 4. Budget Constraints for Startups For startups or companies with a tight budget, bringing on a SalesOps team can be a more cost-effective solution than RevOps. SalesOps requires less structural reorganization and can be integrated into your team with minimal disruption. This makes it an ideal choice for companies that need to optimize their sales processes without incurring significant expenses. 5. Inefficient Use of Sales Technology If your sales team is not making the most of the available sales technologies, SalesOps can help. They can evaluate your current tools, recommend new ones, and train your team to use them effectively, ensuring that your sales operations are as efficient as possible. 6. High Turnover Rate in Sales Team A high turnover

Sales Representative to Sales Operations – A Good Move?

We understand that this might be a point of view that is subject to argument, but that did not stop us from putting this down, as we believe that this might prove to be a good move. Let’s see why. The Sales Representative has seen, lived, breathed, tasted, every bit of the sales process himself. He has tasted rejection and success, pain and pleasure, respect and denigration; he has seen it all in his role as a sales representative. He knows the process inside out and stands a good chance of knowing what works and what doesn’t. The Sales Representative will understand the challenges and pain points of the sales team and the weak links in the process and systems and process as he has experienced them first-hand. So simply put, he will know how to address them. He will be able to put an operations department in place that takes the routine work off the sales team’s shoulders so that the team can focus on their core strength, sales. The Sales Representative will have an all-around view of the sales-marketing- customer triangle of love and will do his best to keep it in the love mode and not allow it to deteriorate. He will add more value to the sales team’s role and ensure he keeps smoothly running operations so as to enhance the performance and productivity of the sales team. On the other hand, many times, organizations opt for external administrative heads or specialists. Let’s find out why this might not be a good problem to have for the sales team. The non-sales person will never know how the sales organization or department works and the nitty-gritty involved. He will never know the sales departmental processes inside out or how they work, as much as a person who has lived with these processes would know. He would not be able to relate to the real world challenges and problems and the aspirations and inspirations of the sales team. He may be more focused on tactics and not results. He may be more reactive instead of being proactive, which is more a result of not knowing fully how the sales system works. He would still be an outsider to the sales department and may not be readily accepted as one of them soon. Sales and Operations are not being two separate things, and being intricately intertwined, needs a sales representative, a hands-on guy to perform sales operations well. Sales operations are perhaps one of the most important roles in the sales organization and on the sales floor and the person who heads it needs to be chosen from one among the tribe if it were to work smoothly without too much friction.

Sales Operations Demystified – Part 2

In the last blog, we saw how Sales Operations as a function was clearly misunderstood. There we read about the first two points that demystified Sales Operations. In this blog, we will read about the other 2 points that help us in understanding the role that Sales Operations plays in the Sales Organization. Helping in building a high-performance Sales Organization and Working on improving team efficiencies and execution Helping in building a high-performance Sales Organization The Sales Operations needs to work on an organizational structure that works smoothly and effectively as well as efficiently to help the sales team to deliver to its targets. Below is how the Sales Operations can make a difference. Hiring the right people: The kind of people you recruit and allow to walk in through your door can make or break your sales team and their performance. Highly self-motivated people, open-minded learners and star performers can make a world of difference, but morale -breakers can ruin the performance of an existing team too. Sales Operations needs to work with HR on laying down some good hiring practices, using some key evaluation tools to ensure you are hiring the right guys. Allocating Territories: Allocating territories can be a crucial function of Sales Operations. They need to measure the richness of territories for the opportunity, logistically correct allocation, vertical-wise allocation and a number of such permutations and combinations for the best performance. The key is to balance territories for opportunity and impact. Incentive Planning: The backbone of sales is the incentive plans. Sales are driven by incentives, this is their drive, their charge. Sales Operations needs to plan their compensation, incentives, rewards in a way that keeps them secure as well as charged to deliver. The recognition needs to be built-in too and frequencies of such programs need to be planned so as to keep the sales team motivated and positive at all times. Communications: Nothing positive can happen without communication. Sales Operations needs to keep communication flowing in and out – to ensure that the organizations’ best practices, wins, and even challenges are communicated; while ensuring feedback flows in. This helps positive action and results. Team Efficiency and Execution Sales Operations works to ensure that the sales team is spending the maximum time on building the sales portfolio. Certain things need to be taken care of towards achieving this. Inside-Out Communication: Salespeople may often get uneasy or not bothered about communicating externally or internally. They are far too focused on their core job of selling. But communication is an important part of selling and hence the sales operations team needs to look at tools that help the sales team communicate at the right time in the right way to the right people. These could be guidelines, certain templates and more, built to help them across the selling process. Bottlenecks in Processing: Sales Operations need to frequently assess, identify and correct bottlenecks in the sales process. Are the proposals, contracts going out on time, is there a check on them? These bottlenecks once removed, help in meeting the deliveries as promised while helping avoid irate customers and losing sleep and valuable time in pacifying them. Using the CRM: Sales Operations can work on helping the sales team to use the CRM to create value for the prospects. However, what is seen is that the Sales Operations spend a lot of their time in making the sales team comply with the filling in and following other to-dos about the CRM and other procedures. This can be avoided and will only help in smoothening the sales process. Time Management: Automating routine tasks and setting procedures that allow the sales team to focus more on their core area- sales, rather than getting stuck in administrative work is a matter of time management. This is where Sales Operations can help. Tools and Technologies: Sales Operations should be on the lookout for tools and technologies that can help streamline the sales process and help the sales team in managing the sales process better. Sales operations as we have seen in this blog and the earlier blog is a lot more than pure execution. It involves a lot of proactive work, strategizing, planning, as well as bridging the gap between leadership and execution.

Sales Operations Demystified – Part 1

Sales Operations are often misunderstood as that part of the sales functional structure that only focuses on the execution part. Operations as a word inherently seem to exclude strategic thinking. But seen from up close, Sales Operations not only ensures that the sales organization runs smoothly, but also plans for it; it works to see that the sales team delivers, it makes the necessary improvements as and when required and helps in scaling up the entire process smoothly. Sales Operations actually are all of what we just said and maybe even more. As Amanda O’Neill, Director of Sales Operations at AT&T puts it, “Sales Operations describes a cross-functional role that guides customers through introductory training, provides support through the sales lifecycle, and enables long-term account sustainability.” We have broken down the main facets of the Sales Operations role into 4 points, here. Setting the Sales Strategy Working towards creating Sales Excellence Helping in building a high-performance Sales Organization and Working on improving team efficiencies and execution Let’s talk about the first two points of detail and in the ensuing blog, we will talk about the latter two in detail. Setting the Sales Strategy Sales Operations is not just about the ‘doing’ or ‘execution’. It is also the setting of the ‘How to do it’ that we call as ‘strategy’. The setting of the Sales Strategy has some key elements we need to know. Here they are: Working on an effective Go-To-Market Model ‍This model is a product of various functions coming together to zero in on the best model there can be, for that product, market, and organization. Sales Operations as a functional expert is a key player in determining and assessing the go-to-market model. What will be the friction element in the models that are being discussed, how likely will the model work as far as buyer interest is concerned? This data is best sourced from Sales Operations, thanks to their years of experience in sales organization management. Evaluation of Sales Methodologies ‍Sales Operations Team is the team that has actually worked on the execution of the Sales Methodology. So they can play an active role in helping the leadership evaluate various sales methodologies to be adopted, based on their experience in training and compliance. Sales Operations is the function that knows which methodology has better chances of succeeding and what might fail. Analyzing Sales Big Data ‍The Sales Operations team have their fingers on the ground data or field data. This helps them in playing a key role in deciding the structure of sales organization and the go-to-market model. Sales Forecasting ‍The Sales Operations Team can help in Sales Forecasting as they have a good experience in knowing how to use data to predict ‘the targets that can be met’. Every sales organization tries to minimize the gap between the target and the target met; here, the Sales Operations team can play a key role. ‍ Working towards creating Sales Excellence In helping create Sales Excellence, the Sales Operations Team plays an important role. Besides helping in implementing sales training programs, the Sales Operations team can help in selecting the right approach so that the training turns into learning, into retention of knowledge and into the application of what has been learned. The Sales Operations team can help in the training of the Sales Team in: Selling Products ‍How to get more information about the products, customer insights and thus convert the information into value for prospects. Selling Methodology‍ How to help the Sales Team to become better at Sales Performance? What are the gaps, the bottlenecks that when removed can help the salespeople in performing better? How can Sales Methodology be adjusted for the best performance? Selling – From the customer perspective ‍To ensure that the sales team adds value to the customer, the sales operations team may be required to help the team with the right information, insights, and training. This helps the sales team to build a reputation for themselves as a’ trusted advisor’ and not a vendor or a seller. Proactive Sales Mentoring Instead of waiting for a problem to crop up, the Sales Operations team can help with assessing areas where support is needed regularly and plan for support in advance. This will help in having a calendar of mentoring that will help in a smooth sales process. Keep an eye on the next two points, so that you know the Sales Operations function, for what it truly is.