The Definition of Sales Operations and How it Relates to Revenue

I was surprised when doing research for a recent webinar I participated in that 54% of all sales operation teams have been in their position for less than three years.

This is an interesting trend. At XANT, sales operations bridges the spans and facilitates successful and accelerated lead to revenue generation.

Every sales team at XANT individually plays a specific role in the overall revenue success of the company. Revenue synergy is created through cross team alignment, as seen in the image above. At its core, sales operations comes down to process management and team aligned company accountability.

Sales operations begins in defined individual, team, and company processes attuned to metrics that measure success. Simply stated, every XANT process is measurable and drives company revenue.

The magic occurs when the sales operations team aligns and assists in harmonizing those processes so the whole becomes greater than the sum of the individual parts. A best practice is to review often – some metrics daily, others hourly.

In other words, as Edwards Deming said, we inspect what we expect which drives higher performance.

It’s important that sales operations is the team that reports on the performance. This ensures a neutral eye and keeps each team in the process accountable to revenue. Accountability has allowed XANT to drive performance levels that previously we thought was unattainable.

Public accountability communicates success or highlights areas of concern. We have installed 22 wall-mounted televisions around the office to promote real-time dashboarding of our business. They display the metrics most valuable to our success and that measure effort and results. For our business development team, they track appointments set and the number of monthly/daily qualified opportunities.

Current dashboards allow every team to be able to measure and reach their first downs.

John Donne said, “No man is an island.” That also is true to teams. While at times it may seem like we are the only ones floating in the sea of success. However, in reality the performance of one team affects the opportunity and successful outcomes of others.

In essence, the job of sales operations is to paint a story of what is “now” and then to be confident enough in the data to help lead us to the possibilities of “what could be.”

For a more in-depth look into what sales operations is, and how it effects a sales team, view the slides from a webinar I recently participated in, “Selling the Value of Sales Operations to the Executive Team,” along with Dave Belove, VP of Sales Enablement at Apttus, Steve Silver, Sales Enablement at The TAS Group, and Erik Charles, Director of Product Marketing at Xactly.

Additionally, if you have any other thoughts about the purpose and responsibility of the sales operations team, leave me a note in the comment box.