When J. Patrick Kelly first made use of sales operations at Xerox in the 1970s, he described sales operations as “all the ugly numerical stuff you don’t want to do, but need to do to have a strong sales force.”
Fast forward to now, and sales operations have evolved from doing a few ‘number’ things to doing everything. According to industry research, 85% of sales professionals feel that sales operations are becoming more strategic. Sales operations, formerly the unsung hero, is now in the spotlight, responsible for delivering data and technology to every area of the sales process, allowing sales teams – and their budgets – to do more with less.
Which is great. Except sales operations can also be very complicated stuff. Realizing this many businesses either dismiss the idea altogether and muddle along with ill defined sales strategies or they attempt to make use of sales operations best practices and quickly find themselves in over their heads. Fortunately, help is at hand, in the form of the sales operations consulting team at Pearl Lemon Consulting.
What is Sales Operations Anyway?
The word of the day in business in the 21st century is efficiency, which means increasing company-wide effectiveness while spending less time and money. Sales operations enables this by providing optimal technology that promotes better sales strategy and more productive work to both sales leaders and sales agents.
Sales leaders are given tools that aid in planning and crucial choices, such as performance dashboards and automated forecasting. Sales staff are given technologies that make selling easier and faster, such as enablement and AI-powered recommendations.
As a result, there is a lot of money coming in. According to McKinsey, firms with world-class sales operations teams realize a 20% to 30% increase in sales productivity.
The word of the day in business in the 21st century is efficiency, which means increasing company-wide effectiveness while spending less time and money. Sales operations enables this by providing optimal technology that promotes better sales strategy and more productive work to both sales leaders and sales agents.
Sales leaders are given tools that aid in planning and crucial choices, such as performance dashboards and automated forecasting. Sales staff are given technologies that make selling easier and faster, such as enablement and AI-powered recommendations.
As a result, there is a lot of money coming in. According to McKinsey, firms with world-class sales operations teams realize a 20% to 30% increase in sales productivity.
How Can Sales Operations Consulting Help?
No matter what they are trying to sell, or even to some degree at what scale, implementing a new sales operations strategy, or refining an old, inefficient one, is something the sales consulting team at Pearl Lemon Consulting particularly excel at.
This is, in part, because they have made it their business to understand the technical and practical complexities at an academic level and can pass that learning on to clients. But it is also because they have personally, actively made use of it in helping to improve the sales performance of the wide range of companies that make up the Pearl Lemon Group, and so have a current, practical working insight that many other consultants do not. And yes, they can very much feel your pain.
So how can they help you harness the positive power of successful sales operations? In all of the following ways (and many more).
Help You Find and Implement the Best Sales Operations Tools
A good CRM, which allows teams to manage the sales pipeline from a single source of data and insight, is the starting point for all sales operations solutions. Other purpose-built solutions, such as those that provide smart lead insights or sales planning capabilities, may also be used by sales operations. These tools can be integrated as stand-alone solutions or implemented directly into the CRM.
But choosing the right ones can be hard to say the least. There are a lot out there now, and none of them are cheap (well a few are, but their scope is often far too limited) Making the wrong choice can not only slow your path to greater sales success but also result in sales budget shortfalls because you spent money on the wrong sales operations tools.
Working with our sales operations consulting team is not, however, about being blindly guided to implement certain tools because we think they are cool, or make sense from a monetary standpoint. We’ll sit down and take the time to understand your current sales practices, access any CRM you have in place, walk you through other options and then work with you – rather than talk at you – to determine what works best for your unique business.
Help You Understand What Data Matters
As we mentioned, good sales operations are data driven. But as most CRMs produce a lot of data, learning how to best interpret that data, understand which of it matters most, and then take it to provide real and actionable insights into your day to day sales activities is an art in itself.
Working with the Pearl Lemon Consulting sales operation consulting team means that your sales leaders, and sales reps, will be guided towards the most efficient use of the reams of data they’ll now have at their fingertips.
We'll Help Ensure That Everyone Is on the Same Page
One of the biggest complaints sales teams have about sales operations is that they are simply not given enough training and insight and instead ‘thrown to the wolves’ and expected to figure things out by themselves.
This is not only frustrating for them, but a waste of their time and your investment in sales operations tools. The best CRM, for example, is useless if most people don’t use it and still ‘do their own thing’ as a result.
When you work with Pearl Lemon Consulting we will sit down with both sales leaders and sales teams to determine who knows what, who needs to learn more, who is most resistant to change and why, and, most importantly, what needs to be done to ensure that any and all investments of time and money in sales operations pay off. If needed we’ll even help you find the sales trainers you need to educate your sales teams.
The emphasis of sales across all industries is shifting. It used to be about motivating individuals to achieve better personal results above anything else. It is now time to focus on increasing the efficiency of the sales process itself and that of the larger sales team. Good sales operations do that, and a lot more.
Ultimately, of course, sales will always be about personal connection: one agent talking to one consumer, or at least, in the digital space, creating the illusion of that interaction. Sales operations’ role is to employ data, structure, and tech to keep the focus on the human aspect where it belongs — whether that’s through automating non-selling duties or coaching sales staff through AI dialogues.
It’s been stated by experts many times that sales keep the lights on – and it’s true. However, sales operations can – and should be – the current that flows to the sales light bulbs. And it needs to be strong and uninterrupted. Something that working with our sales operations consulting teams will help you accomplish in your business. Contact us today and let’s talk more about just how we can help you.
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