The sales ops mission at a glance seems straightforward—to set up sales teams for scalable growth while enabling consistent and superior sales execution.
But it sometimes seems that the cards are stacked against this focused mission with the sales ops job description getting longer and more complex every quarter. Relatively lean yet scrappy sales ops organizations needing to constantly strike that balance between short and longer term strategic planning, process design, sales analytics and deal strategy, systems planning and support, field enablement, forecasting, tight coordination with the SDR and marketing teams—the list goes on and on.
On top of that, based on our recent survey of nearly 300 sales professionals, sales ops leaders find themselves in a challenging sales execution environment where:
- Sales reps seem to be spinning their wheels a bit on the wrong opportunities, with 38% focused on the wrong opportunities, which may shed light on why only 14% of respondents report having 70% of reps hitting quota last year.
- Sales managers are hungering to get a better handle on the health of the pipeline, with 70% reporting that they're looking beyond CRM for pipeline visibility, leveraging 1:1s, reports, and team calls to try to understand the status and health of deals. But only 1 out of 5 find these 1:1 meetings truly effective.
- And finally, sales execs seem a bit unsure of the road ahead, with 48% having difficulty accurately calling their number while only 7% can forecast within 5% of actual achievement, even 2 weeks before the end of the quarter.
So, against this backdrop, how can sales ops leaders set up the function for greater impact when it sometimes feels like the team is spread thin across so many initiatives and reacting to strategy vs. helping to shape it?
To answer all of these questions, sales ops leaders will join the conversation at next week's Sales Ops Edge, a virtual summit hosted by Clari in collaboration with Datanyze, LeanData, TOPO, ClearSlide, and OpsPanda. Sales Ops Edge is a series of webinars focused on how to level-up the sales ops function and create a true competitive advantage for your organization.
Tune in to hear from sales visionaries, sales ops leaders, and practitioners about the sales ops strategy playbook and how to set up sales teams for success and scalable execution from opportunity to close. Learn from the experts on all things sales ops, from account qualification and lead routing to sales planning best practices and how to optimize your sales process and much more!