How To Be The Best Sales Ops Manager

Sales departments generate lots of important information that top managers use for making crucial business decisions. Salespeople also need support for them to be effective in the field. Now, the person who is tasked with making sure that these parties are efficiently served is the sales ops manager. He/she has the potential to make or break an organization. So, what does a sales operations manager need to do to excel at their job?

1. Take Charge  

If you are a good employee, your very presence in an organization must be felt because of your excellent performance, irrespective of your position. This is not different for a sales ops manager. Here, you must take charge of all the information reported by salespeople from the field. This includes CRM data and sales volumes.  

It also goes without saying that this data ought to be the most current one. In fact, you should collect this information on a daily basis, analyze it, and share with stakeholders. This enables the top management to make an informed decision based on current and accurate data from the field. If you work closely with sales team leaders, they’ll get you this information easily as opposed to getting it from individual staff.  

2. Support Sales Teams  

Generally, the compensation of a salesperson is directly proportional to the volume of products sold. Therefore, it’s in their best interest to spend much of their time on the field rather than in the office. As a good sales ops manager, you must strive to support your sales force by providing the following: 

a. Training 

The modern marketplace is ever changing and requires informed salespeople to successfully wade through.  A good sale operations manager foresees this deficit, especially with new personnel, and plans for their training. It’s also important to keep records of who is trained on what so as to maintain updated skillset records. This information is also critical when it comes to risk management in the workplace. 

b. The necessary working tools 

Irrespective of the type of work you do, you can’t achieve much if you lack the right tools to get the job done. A top-notch manager will, therefore, plan in advance and ensure the business provides adequate tools for its sales teams. For example, if teams need to commute from one place to another during their course of work, the company should provide a budget for this expenditure and make prior arrangement.  

The sales ops manager should, therefore, ensure that the staff can access these services whenever they need to. Other items such as brochures and sample products should also be readily available to sales staff when they need to use them.  He should, however, ensure accountability among the sales employees and prevent any misuse of the company facilities. 

3. Be an Effective Communicator  

Why? Sales operations managers get the rare opportunity to sit in high-level meetings with senior management. They are required to explain the exact positions of various teams and any strategies being employed to meet targets. It’s in such meetings where sales ops managers can point out any concerns that the staff could have so as to get responses from senior management. It’s also their duty to disseminate critical top-level decisions to sales teams to make sure that no one is left behind doing their own stuff.  

Conclusion  

It’s important to note that a sales ops manager handles the operational aspects of the selling processes. For instance, they handle customer relationship management data and therefore there is a need for them to up their game so as to avoid any complaints. Any good sales ops manager is also a great communicator and seeks to support the sales teams to ensure that they exceed their quotas.