Why Sales Operations Leaders Are Important for Revenue Growth

Until recently, the role of Sales Operations was largely overlooked by early-stage startups looking to grow. It’s a role that was more common at larger B2B enterprise companies to manage revenue and company growth. Even those startups that did have a Sales Operations function viewed it mainly as a technical or administrative position.

But today, more and more companies are rapidly discovering the critical role Sales Operations can play in improving sales processes, increasing win rates, and driving revenues. Sales Operations leaders now often serve as trusted advisors to C-Level executives and are considered secret weapons for the sales, marketing, and customer success teams. Employing essential technologies and delivering mission-critical intelligence, Sales Operations are literally transforming how companies predict, manage, and grow revenues.

As aptly put by SiriusDecisions, Sales Operations leaders are a force multiplier, the missing link between the development and the execution of the sales strategy and go-to-market (GTM) strategy.

1. Sales Operations Leaders See the Big Picture

Sales Operations departments use data to drive strategy, best practices to guide training, and technology to hack success. Still, their work can sometimes be overlooked and under-appreciated. Often, after building the foundations and establishing the sales processes, Sales Operations departments revert to acting as CRM managers, responsible primarily for system maintenance and administration. This is a shame because only Sales Operations leaders can see the comprehensive picture and the complete funnel. As a result, they are the ones who understand the needs of all the different departments responsible for growth — marketing, sales, finance, and customer success.

Sales Operations have a strong impact on both top-line (productivity) and bottom line (efficiency) performance because they analyze all the company data, making Sales Operations a strategic and indispensable component of a mature sales organization. This is especially true in the enterprise, SaaS, and B2B spaces.

Sales Operations leaders deal with virtually every key functional group and level in an organization. Working with all the company’s teams, Sales Operations personnel engage in both tactical and strategic activities to help everyone involved visualize the customer journey and build an optimized revenue machine. By integrating and using different tools, such as CRM platforms, activity capture, document generation, lead generation, cadence management, and others, Sales Operations professionals use the data to analyze the customer journey and understand how each individual department can improve its overall productivity and increase revenue.

Sales Operations leaders also play a pivotal role in creating and securing the sales pipeline. There are a number of methods for achieving this, and each one needs to be well-defined and broken down into concrete steps that individuals reps can consistently and accurately follow. Clearly, companies run on revenue. And the Sales Operations function plays a critical role in helping sales and marketing teams achieve peak performance. With the right tools and processes in place, Sales Operations professionals can ensure that the business and the sales team run like a well-oiled machine.

Ross Nibur, Director of Revenue Operations and Strategy at Toast, noted that sales operations leaders:

“are about taking a more holistic, end-to-end approach to managing operations across your organization. What I’ve seen happen is a siloing in data structure and processes for marketing, customer services, and sales teams. The problem is that you need data that will tell you the entire story in order to optimize your business. You can’t think of your operations teams as individual systems that work together — they need to work as one machine.”

Sales Operations isn’t just another way of saying sales — or any other operations title for that matter. That’s because the primary goal of Sales Operations is collaborating with all the revenue-related teams to hit the KPIs that enable the company to scale and achieve long-term growth.

2. Sales Operations Leaders Generate Optimized and Actionable Strategies

Positioned at the intersection where a company’s strategy, processes, and execution meet, Sales Operations leaders play a critical role in making a business become more efficient. Equipped with all relevant data, Sales Operations leaders work directly with management to execute the company’s go-to-market plan.

Key to Success

In most companies, the sales leadership team is focused on “making the numbers” and signing new deals. Too often stuck on the expectations treadmills, sales teams can find themselves running faster and faster to try to make the numbers and the KPIs. Every month, every quarter, every year, the sales team must be running a little faster uphill to try to hit the numbers and KPIs. Constantly running after business, they can lose sight of the larger picture. Therefore, the Sales Operations leaders, armed with more data and a broader perspective, can perform strategic sales functions and make a meaningful impact on revenue growth.

How? Sales Operations leaders can make the work of the treadmill-running sales team easier by focusing on the bigger business picture. This includes offering both tactical and strategic initiatives, such as programs that allow the sales team to achieve their sales plans and KPIs. Sales Operations leaders describe the customer journey, help sales reps to sell, optimize the sales organization’s productivity, and allow them to focus solely on revenue-generating activities. By using both technology and analytical skills, Sales Operations leaders evaluate the funnel, measure and optimize the sales reps’ productivity, and provide insights on the sales cycle and the customer journey from beginning to end. This enables the organization to focus on revenue-generating activities.

Why? Sales Operations has become a catch-all function, with Sales Operations leaders getting assigned all the work no one else wants to do. Often underfunded and understaffed, Sales Operations units nonetheless usually succeed in making a meaningful revenue contribution. Sales Operations leaders strive to create a bridge between sales and the rest of the business, helping the sales team understand the business goals and giving the leadership the forecast information they need to make decisions. Sales Operations leaders are multilingual, speaking the languages of business, finance, marketing and sales, and serving as interpreters between these groups.

3. From Strategy to Data Analysis and Execution

As a company grows, a centralized Sales Operations team can create a cross-functional framework that facilitates more transparency and improved coordination of sales and marketing strategies for maximum revenue impact. Accomplishing this involves implementing four key elements:

1. Management & Strategy: Sales Operations professionals can formulate a company’s GTM strategy and help execute the company vision in a way that adds value to customers, satisfies management requirements, and helps customer-facing teams meet their objectives.
2. Process Optimization: With their high level of empathy for sales reps, Sales Operations professionals can help optimize key marketing and sales processes. They understand the challenges customer-facing teams face and provide solutions. In a sense, the Sales Operations personnel relate to the sales reps as their own customers, appropriately setting expectations and pushing back according to the situation.
3. Technology & Project Management: Sales Operations professionals are able to implement the right technologies and manage process workflows. They have the technical skills to turn data into gold by managing CRM and forecasting. They can build rapport with front-line managers and leverage this rapport to create positive feedback loops and solve problems.
4. Data & Analytics: Sales Operations professionals don’t only deliver the right data, but they can translate them into actionable insights. They are passionate about end customers and all their efforts are directed to adding value for their company’s customers.

When looking to drive a sales transformation, seek out successful and experienced Sales Operations professionals who can deliver these advantages. Sales Operations could be what makes or breaks your sales transformation effort.

Dear CEO/COO/CRO, have you hired a Sales Operations Leader yet?

#TheOptimizers