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8 Qualities to be a Perfect Sales Operations Professional
- Amit Jain
- Jun 29, 2021
- 4 min read
Sales Operations Professionals perform a lot of tasks. Their department has a diverse set of responsibilities to handle. Some of their work includes coming up with sales strategies, compensation plans, maintaining reports, implementing new sales productivity software, managing sales force automation, territory alignment, supporting the sales team in finding new prospects, data analytics, and reporting. These professionals help the sales team maintain sustainable growth. Sales Operations Professionals are also familiar with the company’s CRM and complex datasets which will help them optimize the sales processes.
Here are 8 qualities that will help you become a successful sales operations professional:
1. Creating Forecasts and Budgets
Sales operations managers should be able to estimate sales properly. Sales forecasting is the practice of anticipating future sales for your company based on historical data and performance patterns. Developing a skill that will help your company’s goals to be aligned with the budgets and attainment of sales quotas will further the company’s growth. With the understanding of how to analyze financial statements, future planning and coming up with strategies for future projects will also become easier and more efficient for sales ops professionals. Creating forecasts enables a sales operations manager to identify and handle possible difficulties, set realistic targets to challenge a sales team, assist sales leaders in making data-driven choices, and develop an effective sales strategy.
2. Understanding of CRM
Customer relationship management, or CRM, is a way in which any business or organization monitors its interactions with the customers. A sales operations manager can use CRM analytics to monitor and interpret sales data in order to determine the performance of a product, process, or campaign. A sales ops professional can examine the external market and do competitive research in addition to assessing internal data. An organization or a company can collect data from multiple channels such as social media, polls, websites, etc. This helps the organization target the correct set of customers and increase efficiency and overall profit. A sales operations manager should have expertise with CRM, presenting data, and understanding how the data may benefit their sales teams.
3. Technical Proficiency
As mentioned above, the majority of the work done by these professionals requires technical skills. Advancements in sales and marketing technologies/tools that are readily available to enterprises are one of the key motivations driving the emergence of Sales Operations. Production automation, data entry, working with complex datasets, implementation of new sales productivity software, all these processes demand technical skills. The sales ops team is in charge of managing and utilizing the essential technological tools and platforms, sometimes in collaboration with the IT department. Hence, technical proficiency would be an ideal quality in any Sales ops professional.
4. Customer Service Skills
The top sales operations teams focus on not just assisting sales agents with incentive reports, but also giving actionable insights that drive success and long-term client retention. Since they interact with so many people daily, including customers, it is important to understand that they represent the company when they interact with customers or clients. A positive attitude, feeling of loyalty, adaptability, and persuasiveness are some things that the employee should keep in mind while interacting with a customer. Having a clear understanding and clear communication with the customer will also lead to a good reputation for the company, and possibly a positive result. While the sales person is still in charge of monitoring client happiness, the sales operations professional may assist them by communicating and sharing essential information and insights about their accounts.
5. Strategic Planning
Strategic Planning is a quality that will help improve your company’s performance in the long run. A sales operations professional must be able to identify an issue and then approach it in a way that the company gets a successful outcome. The key decisions that need to be made require a certain amount of strategic planning as these decisions play a crucial role in determining the company’s future.
6. Communication Skills
Sales operations employee serves as a spokesperson for the sales team. They are crucial in the planning of the sales operations activities in order to enable cross-functional collaboration across the company. A good set of communication skills is a must for any sales ops professional. Since they are linked with several departments of the company, they must communicate well with people and ensure the goals and objectives of the company are achieved. The sales operations personnel is responsible for holding the sales team accountable by reporting on sales and campaign results as well as disseminating team news and victories. Good communication skills will negate the chances of misunderstandings and improve the efficiency of the workplace.
7. Business Comprehension
These professionals should know how business works and how to deal with a ‘Business Situation’. Sometimes, the situation might need a quick and effective solution. In such times, Sales ops professionals should be able to understand the depth of the situation and make an informed decision. Their decision will impact every aspect of the business, so this quality is a must.
8. Time Management
People who work in sales must understand the value of time. With so many roles and responsibilities, it is important to make time for essential tasks. The details of any project should not be neglected just because of your poor time management skills. Make your schedule for the day and stick to it. Others will have a negative opinion of you if you are late for meetings. Making coworkers and customers wait is a sin unless and until there is an emergency. Start a bit earlier to ensure that you arrive at meetings on schedule. Juggling between so many departments can be hectic, but it can become manageable and efficient with a systematic approach. Budgets, reports, sales strategies, data analytics, all of the work done by a sales ops professional require time and attention to detail.
Conclusion
A Sales Operations Professional ensures the growth of their organization. They have a lot of duties and responsibilities. The duties performed by a sales operations professional helps the salespeople as the sales process becomes much smoother. Their work has an impact on every department of the company. Hence, it becomes important to find the people with the right set of qualities who can handle the work.
