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Sales Operations must ensure the Sales organization is efficient. It has moved from an administrative role to business strategy one. The clear definition of roles and responsibilities can vary from a company to another but we can identify the main functions:

Sales Methodology & Process

The sales methodology and the sales process are the “alphabet” of a sales organization. While the sales methodology is high-level, the sales process describes the stages each sales opportunity follows. There are different kinds of methodology and processes and the role of Sales Operations is to:

  1. Participate to the choice of the methodology and process based on the company business objective.
  2. Enforce its usage across the company to maintain a common language which is the foundation of communications and business decisions (metrics).
  3. Enable the sales team on the sales methodology and process.

Business Analysis

Sales Operations provides the Sales Management with KPIs to measure how successful the business is and how the sales activities are performing. Sales Operations should also provide recommendations to increase effectiveness and efficiency. We will not cover all types of analysis, dashboards, KPIs, data visualizations but it is important to focus on on the I/O of the sales organization (forecast and pipeline) and to perform some adhoc analysis focus on a specific topic.

Revenue Forecast

It is key to predict the future revenue and to identify actions to reach the target. In this exercise, the opportunities are divided into categories (Won, Commit, Upside, Pipeline, Lost) and subcategories (for example: at risk, bridge).

Sales Pipeline

We must understand if we are filling the “machine” with enough “fuel” (opportunities) to reach the destination (revenue target). This exercise focus around the number of opportunities, their amount, the conversation rate from one sales stage to the next one and the speed (based on time spent on each stage).

Other adhoc Analysis

This type of analysis is specific to a situation (why are we declining in a specific segment, how can we improve the support renewal rate for a given product, etc.). Sales Operations will address the topic as a strategy consultant.

Sales planning

The objective is to organize the sales team to meet the expected revenue within the cost envelope. The idea is to divide the business into different categories and for each category define:

The outcome of the exercise is a complete sales structure with territory (account assignment), detailed quota, compensation plan defined at the individual level.

Other

The items mentioned below can be an extension of the above points, managed directly by sales operations or in synchronization with other teams.