magazine |
July 22, 2016
The Secret to Winning Performance Conditions
By:
Whatever product or service they sell, SBI 100 companies share many similarities. They have hundreds of processes to develop and thousands of sales reps clamoring for help. Furthermore, these companies have gigabytes of raw data that need to be turned into actionable insights. How do top companies handle these business challenges? They have a sales operations department.
Sales ops is the catalyst that helps harness the power of the sales organization. Sitting at the intersection of sales, marketing, HR, and finance, this unique team focuses the organization on efficient sales processes.
Investing in Sales Effectiveness
Some CEOs view non-sales roles as purely cost. However, our findings indicate that companies with effective sales forces invest heavily in two areas. They invest 50 percent of their sales effectiveness budget on hiring and developing people and 50 percent on placing these people into winning performance conditions.
What happens to newly hired “A-Players” who are placed into a poorly designed sales division? You know the answer. They miss their revenue target. A sales ops department creates the performance conditions you need to make your number.
If your company is not on the SBI 100 list, the first step toward joining its ranks is to build a world-class sales ops team. How can you tell if your sales ops team measures up? Great sales ops leaders perfectly balance strategy and execution. Sales ops teams think strategically when they evaluate sales force tactics. They are tactical when they oversee key performance indicators, manage the CRM, and provide analysis to the executive team.
Unifying Team Efforts
To build a first-rate sales ops organization, start with a charter that defines what the team will and will not do. Sales ops should not be the dumping ground for unwanted responsibilities. A well-designed and well-executed charter unifies efforts around a specific set of objectives and sets up the team for success. Sales ops must be laser-focused on tasks that help the sales force make its number.
In this issue, we rank the world’s largest sales forces.
As we round out 2020 and begin to look ahead to 2021, the topic of revenue planning is surely at the...
Marketing leaders have faced numerous difficulties over the past year, but one challenge is not excl...
If you’re like most Sales Leaders we’ve worked with, you’re glad the first half is...
It may be easy to assume that tech-enabled services became an overnight success in the wake of the w...
For many services companies who achieve exponential growth within narrow timeframes, they often find...
As you continually work on fine-tuning your sales organization, how can you best ensure that every p...
While the world innovated rapidly and continually adopts many advanced technologies, the sales envir...
While the Business Services industry saw comfortable growth preceding the pandemic, only a select fe...
SBI TV episodes bring you Sales and Marketing insights from B2B industry thought leaders and growth experts, on topics like product, pricing, customer experience and success, and go to market. Catch up on new and previous episodes here.