Structuring an Effective Sales Operations Organization
- Four pillars of sales excellence: (*=foundational)
- Sales Design & Strategy: (*) customer segmentation; (*) coverage model & capacity/resource planning; compensation & quota (incl. SPIFs); territory design; channel strategy; pricing & packaging
- Field enablement: (*) value prop & messaging; demand gen (incl. SDR); playbook & methodology; onboarding & training; account planning; customer success & renewals; recognition programs; SKO
- Management & operations: (*) pipeline management; analysis & reporting; forecasting cadence; operating model & rhythm; deal desk; project management
- Tech stack: MarTech; CRM; sales productivity; sales management; quotas and compensation; CLM/CPQ
- For governance purposes, consider having deal desk roll into either finance or legal
Building a best-in-class pipeline management process
- Step 1: Unambiguous expectations for each stage
- Think of a
matrix with stages in columns (qualifying; educating; validating; proposing; deciding; closed won) and the following in rows: buyer actions; seller actions; buyer exit criteria; seller exit criteria; tools
- Think of a
- Step 2: Adhere to a sales qualification framework
- MEDDIC for complex, enterprise deals with 5+ decision makers
- BANT for simple, SMB/MM deals
- Step 3: Disciplined pipeline review cadence
- Weekly 1:1s are necessary but not sufficient. Weekly forecast calls do not work well. Instead….
- In addition to weekly 1:1s, schedule weekly calls with different focus areas such as: CQ commit; pushed deal review; CQ top deal review; CQ pipeline review; NQ pipeline review; NQ top deals review; NQ commit [CQ=current quarter; NQ=next quater]
- Did you ask the prospect, ‘Are we winning?’ Do you have a mutually agreed timeline/plan?
- Pipeline coverage target depends on your historical rates but common 2.5x to 3x. This
obvious varies with where you are in the quarter.
- Step 4: Use advanced analytics to measure pipeline health/six key questions
- Q1: Size/coverage? calculate win rate need to hit plan and compare to what you actually do
- Q2: Strength? % commit
- Q3: Maturity? % in
late stage - Q4: Hygiene? % old (age); % stuck (no recent stage change); % stale (past target close date)
- Q5: Concentration? Top 5 (or 10) deals as a % of total
- Q6: Linearity? % by month; % by week (to prevent bunching deals at end of month/quarter)
- Inspect deals that fall out of commit
- Most organizations have a manager override; the most sophisticated organizations scientifically adjust ‘sanbaggers’ and ‘optimists’
- Over a certain deal-size (and based on prospect company size), know that you must have C-level sign-off
- Commit (90%+); Likely (75%); Upside (50%); Pipeline (10%)
- Qualification criteria: (a) economic buyer committed to timeline (b) Competitors eliminated? (c) Business case approved by
sponsor ?
The Wisdom of Peter Sobiloff
- Great sales leaders: (a) spend time in the field (b) know EVERY deal in their patch and inspect status and next steps (c) prioritize their time/effort on $ (d) work ethic = work the hours you expect of others
- Hire salespeople whose self-worth is wrapped up in their job; who want to win and make money
- Engage each decision maker to build out business value during discovery (not later since they are less wiling to share as you approach negotiations). You may execute this as a formal “study.” Business value comes from increasing revenue, lowering costs, lowering risk. For cost reduction, factor in what they can do with the FCF and use the multiplier (ex: $1 redirected to marketing à $5 in revenue). Add all business value contributions together, be prepared to chop by 50%, and present to the CEO.
- Accelerating AE ramp time: Accept ramp time (for the most part); instead, hire with sufficient time to meet your needs, accounting for hiring cycle time. Ask customers, ‘Who is great that also sells to you?’ Build relationship with those people by checking regularly. Since they should be crushing quota, you’ll only get them when they get unhappy (often with non-monetary things.)
- Promote internally AND hire externally
- Keep pressure on your salespeople (pressure is a part of their job)
- Managers should spend time on their middle performers; people who struggle generally do so because of work ethic, prioritization, time management, or failure to ask & learn
- Many prospect objections come from competitor FUD. When objection handling, play the chess (2 or 3 moves forward) to think through how your competitor will counter when your prospect brings your response back.
- Hold regular objection handling “clinics” to ensure everybody is able to competently and consistently address
- Embed best practices that you share with your team inside of stories of winning
- Ensure your reps close their meetings with and that the follow-up on their commitments; you’d be surprised how many reps don’t manage the time during the meeting well enough to ensure adequate wrap up time at the end
Optimizing your go-to-market tech stack
- Evaluation criteria: (a) infrastructure compatibility (b) total cost of ownership (c) required resources (d) ensure tool in concert with people & process will address
need (e) conduct independent reference checks - Tools cannot solve people and process problems. Importantly, make sure you have your b
usiness rules defined before you a tool to implement those rules - All tools need an
opps owner and a business owner
Sales Compensation
- Keep your plan simple. Strive for no more than 1 or 2 metrics in variable comp. Reps should be able to know how much they made when they close a deal with simple mental math.
- Base/variable mix changes based on influence/impact. AEs are often 50/50, account managers & first line sales managers 60/40 or 70/30, sales engineers 80/20, and SDRs 90/10.