The Next Frontier for Sales Operations: A Trusted Advisor for Growth
Brian Selby, Expert Partner, McKinsey & Company
I like to define sales operations in two ways. One, it’s the group that brings science to sales. There’s always this discussion or debate, is sales really art, or is it science? For successful organizations to be really good at selling, you have to bring a blend of both. Sales operations is the group that needs to be an expert in the science and bring that to bear in the organization.
The second thing is that very high-caliber sales operations organizations serve as a trusted advisor to the head of sales. They really play the role where they are almost the COO of the sales organization, with influence across the whole company. This is especially significant in today’s landscape.
Sales operations’ impact on growth
For several years, companies in a number of industries have seen stagnating growth rates. As a result, sales leaders are being asked by the board of directors and shareholders to up these rates. Typically, the requests do not include additional sales headcount, and in some cases, sales is being asked to reduce headcount.
That puts a premium on sales leadership’s ability to figure out ways to not only grow the top line, but also to improve sales productivity — and to do this with the same resources or potentially less resources than what they previously had. What this does is open up a big opportunity for sales operations.
Afterall, sales operations is typically the group within the sales organization that has the knowledge and the capabilities to really understand where the pockets of growth are, and the technology, people levers, and process levers that can be pulled to drive growth and productivity, without adding resources.
What sales operations should do well
In my experience, world-class sales operations groups do three things. Number one, they execute operational excellence. They run a tight ship. They have very strong pipeline health and forecast accuracy. Overall, they good control of the basic sales operations disciplines.
Number two, they play a peer role with other sales leaders within the organization, including the individuals that run the geographies or various customer segments. They take a proactive leadership role alongside those who can drive the business, who run the pipeline meetings, who run the forecasting calls, and who run the account planning clinics on behalf of the sales organization.
And number three is that they step up and play a change leadership role to drive the business forward. They think about the leading indicators that the organization needs to measure to understand whether or not they’re making progress towards transformation. They also drive adoption of new selling motions, processes, and systems.
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