Sales operations—also known as sales ops or sales support—is a role within a sales organization focused on helping sales teams run as efficiently as possible.
Over the years, sales ops has evolved to become responsible for a company’s sales technology stack and sales effectiveness. For that reason, sales operations is often involved in selecting the best CRM to meet the organization’s current needs, and using the CRM to provide value and assistance to sellers.
So how can sales ops use CRM to drive and support sales? Here are six common strategies that all sales ops professionals need to master…
1. Building the sales process
Creating a standardized sales process improves your bottom line, increases team effectiveness, and provides the data points necessary for teams to understand which sales activities can be improved. Sales ops can help define and automate the sales process in a company’s CRM, so that reps always know the next step to take with each prospect.
B2B companies using a formal sales process experienced 18% more revenue growth than companies that didn’t, according to a study by Vantage Point Performance and the Sales Management Association.
2. Setting up dashboards
Customized dashboards allow management to quickly view key metrics and team activity at a glance, saving them valuable time every day. Not having to search for this critical information allows sales managers to focus on coaching their teams and helping sales reps close more deals.
3. Creating custom reports
Sales ops have specific insight on which data is most important to their sales organization. Creating detailed custom reports unearths the information needed by management to identify new revenue opportunities and areas for team improvement.
By adding the right filters and making these reports accessible within a sales team’s CRM at the touch of a button, sales ops prevents this information from getting lost in the daily rush of activity.
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Easily-digestible overviews of sales performance help company executives and non-sales departments understand customer behaviors in ways that is actionable to them. This, in turn, improves their ability to support the sales department and company growth.
5. Evaluating and activating CRM integrations
Flexible CRM platforms can integrate with virtually every business software tool that sales teams use. Sales ops can evaluate which CRM integrations their team will need, research the technical requirements, and take lead on activating them. Selecting the right integrations has a multiplier effect on sales rep efficiency.
6. Ensuring accuracy of customer records
Deleting outdated and duplicate contacts in your CRM ensures clean data and useful reporting. This is one of the most important things you can do to keep your CRM functioning properly, and it often falls by the wayside because nobody in the sales team is directly responsible for it. By focusing on CRM hygiene and accuracy of records, sales ops can ensure that all the other processes in the CRM remain effective.
Frequently asked questions
1. How does Sales Ops use a CRM to build a standardized sales process?
Sales Ops uses the CRM to define and automate each stage of the sales cycle. By creating a standardized process within the CRM, Sales Ops ensures that every rep knows exactly which steps to take next with a prospect. This structure not only improves team effectiveness but also provides the consistent data points needed to identify which sales activities are working and which need improvement.
2. Why is Sales Ops responsible for setting up CRM dashboards?
Customized dashboards allow sales managers and leadership to view key metrics and team activity at a glance. Sales Ops configures these dashboards to surface the most critical data immediately, saving managers from manual searching. This allows leadership to spend less time on administration and more time on high-impact coaching and strategy.
3. In what ways does Sales Ops improve data accuracy within the CRM?
One of the most vital roles of Sales Ops is “CRM hygiene.” They ensure the accuracy of customer records by identifying and deleting outdated or duplicate contacts. Maintaining clean data is essential because it ensures that reports and forecasts are reliable, preventing the sales team from making decisions based on faulty information.
4. How does Sales Ops assist with CRM integrations?
Sales Ops evaluates and activates third-party integrations (such as email, accounting, or marketing tools) that have a multiplier effect on efficiency. They research the technical requirements and ensure these tools sync seamlessly with the CRM, allowing sales reps to stay within one platform rather than jumping between different software applications.
5. What is the benefit of Sales Ops creating summary reports for executives?
While sales reps focus on individual deals, Sales Ops prepares high-level summary reports that provide digestible overviews of sales performance. These reports help company executives and other departments (like Marketing or Finance) understand customer behaviors and trends, allowing the entire organization to better support the sales department’s growth goals.
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