The most friction inducing factor is when companies start growing up at an exponential rate and aim at a skyrocketing of revenue. Typically, companies at this stage end up hiring more and more star sales people; which is good in its place, but the most important hire of the organization’s growth season could be a Sales Operations Star.
Here’s why:
- You are hiring new sales people by the dozen; you need someone to train them and make them productive and at a fast clip. While most of us think that sales directors and the top sales people are the ones who should be doing this, we are sadly mistaken. They are the last ones to be interested in helping HR write Job Descriptions, screening candidates, interviewing, recruiting and once on board, training, coaching, mentoring them. Even if they do, they may take their own sweet time as their primary focus is sales. Time lost is sales lost. The need of the hour is a Sales Operations Star.
- A great sales leader isn’t always a great operations guy. There may be exceptions, but they are just that. Exceptions. Most sales leaders and star sales people practically hate the operations job of putting together information in spreadsheets, analyzing it, studying metrics and putting together an action plan to hit where it is needed. They would rather work on the actual field sales. They are action guys and not operations guys.
- Sales and leadership alignment is a back room job – not the battlefield goal. Alignment between sales and marketing may be a good thing to think of and say, but practicing it is often difficult. The sales force is keen to roll up their sleeves and convert the next hot lead they can get their hands on; they are not too fond of pricing, packaging or other high-level strategies and would rather leave it to a representative who is specially cut out for the job – he is better known as the Sales Operations Specialist.
- Generating reports is not the sales person’s cup of tea. Generating reports is the bane of a sales team. Somewhat like a necessary evil; sales persons may often avoid working on reports like the plague. This job is better left to the sales operations person who will, in all probability, lovingly spend lots of time over generating reports from the CRM insights on a daily, weekly, monthly basis in whatever format they are required for whoever at the organizational level.
- Choosing the right technology tools is the mandate of the Sales Operations Chief along with the Sales Leadership. Technology planning, implementation, and the preview is the job of a sales operations person along with the Sales Leadership’s support. Technology and choosing the right tool is crucial to every organization’s sales department as it enters the growth phase.
Sales operations leaders allow their sales force to focus on sales and handle the operations and sales administrative part themselves. Sales operations without a doubt are necessary to grow sales and revenues.
