Job description - Sales Operations (Sales Ops): missions & salary

Where does Sales Ops come in In support sales teams to enable them to sell more effectively. This job has become crucial to the success of Sales teams.

Once considered as simple data analysts, Sales Ops has largely evolved and gained in importance. Their primary objective remains to improve commercial processes, to help salespeople exceed their goals.

What does this job actually consist of? How do I become Sales Ops? Discover the answers to all your questions in this job sheet (missions, training, salary, skills and necessary qualities).

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Sales Ops: the definition

Meaning of the word and translation

Sales Ops refers to the roles, activities, and processes within a sales organization that allow the Sales team to sell better, faster and more effectively.

For example, by recommending the adoption of New tools Or of innovative processes, Sales Ops allows Sales and Business Developers to focus more on selling and thus to optimize their results.

They act as facilitators for salespeople, and are becoming indispensable for businesses, especially for B2B SaaS startups. It is often said that you need 1 Sales Ops for 10 Sales.

What is the role, the missions of a Sales Operations?

The role and missions differ according to the sector of activity, but also according to the organization of each company, and its level of development. Regarding the main missions, we mainly find:

⭐️ Lead Generation

Very often, Sales Ops will help source accounts that meet the criteria defined by management. For example, by identifying the names, contacts and contact details of companies in logistics in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, from 30 to 500 employees.

They use data enrichment tools (e.g. Dropcontact, Clearbit, Lusha) and distribute accounts to SDRs or Business Developers. This is a very time-consuming task for a person with little experience, but handled easily by an analytical profile.

⭐️ Strategy & Performance

Sales Ops initially acted within small teams of specialists in charge financial analyses, sales reports and forecasts. Today, they still love data and reporting! This unit has evolved to contribute to the strategic vision of the sales organization. To do this, a Sales Ops:

• Optimizes sales processes (e.g.: Time to Closing deals (if there are too strong disparities);
• Evaluates technologies and new sales methods (e.g.: implementation of the MEDDIC qualification method);
• Helps to plan and define business goals;
• Data analysis;
• Forecast sales (Sales forecasting).

⭐️ Integrating technology and tools into the sales process

In recent years, we have observed a exponential increase in tools and SaaS sales applications offered to businesses. While they improve sales and improve efficiency/performance, the complexity of these platforms can quickly overwhelm salespeople and result in the opposite effect: wasting time.

That's where Sales Operations comes in. It will allow the Sales team to focus more on pure selling, and take care of reducing friction in the sales process.

In this way, it ensures the integration of applications and tools, manages CRM, communications (e.g. video), data, reporting and automates as many tasks as possible.

⭐️ Operational functions

Sales Ops improve performance and bring expertise to the Sales department by reducing the burden of administrative and operational tasks. Thanks to data analysis and process optimization, they will for example automate tasks. The Ops team can even take care of topics to optimize internal training and hires. She ensures that company representatives have the information and skills they need to succeed in the field.

As a result, salespeople will be able to focus on what they do best: selling.

Duties and responsibilities include:

• Onboarding on the new tools integrated ;
• Optimization of talent recruitment and onboarding;
• Optimization of the management of partnership contracts;
• Knowledge base management.
• Sales team training (a bit like Sales Enablment);

Sales Operations tools

To be Sales Operations is to have process data and be in constant contact with numbers. As his role is to streamline the sales process as much as possible and save time, he also has a number of tools that allow him to be efficient and effective in the execution of his missions.

These tools include:

• The CRM : Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, Zoho...;
• Excel or other data processing tool (e.g. Tableau);
• No-code tools : Notion, Airtable, Zapier... for automating tasks;
• Collaborative communication tool : Slack, Teams...;
• Of email automation tools.
  

What are the qualities of a good Sales Ops?

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What is a good Sales Operations

• Be creative and innovative

A sales process always needs to evolve because new factors will influence it, whether in relation to your customers, the market, or the products.

The idea is not to change it every time a failure occurs, but to take into account the changes that these evolutions and changes bring in order to update the sales process as often as possible andoptimize results.

• Time management: organization and prioritization of tasks

Sales Ops must have this ability to organize and prioritize your tasks. It automates operational tasks to devote your time to tasks with high added value.

A job rich in responsibilities, Sales Ops knows how to allocate the necessary time to the most essential tasks. Project details should not be overlooked due to poor time management. Its role is to win some and to make others win. Organized, he juggles between the various departments with a systematic and effective approach. Between budgets, reports, business strategies, data analytics, all the work that's done requires time and attention to detail.

• Have a good relationship

The Ops team works in active collaboration with the various departments of a startup: Marketing, Sales, etc. When announcing the objectives, it is important to check whether each team is tackling the right subject and that the same subject is not being addressed by several teams.

Numerous Meetings make it possible to solve this problem, and are an opportunity to learn about everyone's levers of action, to identify new Marketing or Sales trends that can positively influence the sales process, etc.

Sales Ops aims at constant communication to ensure the alignment of the various stakeholders.

Among these qualities, a Sales Operations has the spirit of leadership, the ability to analyze data and to facilitate their understanding.

How do you be a good Sales Ops?

• Understanding a CRM

The Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, tool is the way in which any organization monitors its interactions with customers. Thanks to this, it can collect data from several channels such as social networks, the website, etc. A good understanding of this tool promotes better targeting of customers and increases efficiency and overall profit.

• Understanding the issues

A good Sales Ops should be the first to know how their company's Sales department is organized and how to make life easier for their salespeople. Sometimes the situation requires a quick and effective solution. In these cases, he is able to understand the depth of the situation and to make an informed decision. Indeed, this decision has an impact on all aspects of a structure.

• Develop the right business strategy

Setting up the right tactic improves the performance of a startup in the long term. Good Sales Ops identifies a problem and determines all the options available to it. He chooses the best solution, the one that will improve the daily life of Sales, make them more efficient or improve the company's performance.

• Create forecasts and budgets

By understanding how to analyze financial data, future planning and developing business strategies for future projects will become easier and more effective. To do this, Sales Ops aligns its startup's goals with budgets and sales achievement to optimize growth.

How do I become Sales Operations?

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Skills required

• Mastering a CRM;
• Analyze data, key performance indicators;
• Sales knowledge (sales cycle,...);
• Master spreadsheets (Excel, Google Sheet, Airtable, etc.)

Degrees, training and studies required

Few training courses exist to become Sales Ops. The most classic courses are those of candidates who have completed a business or engineering school.

To deal with the shortage of Sales, the co-founders ofAkimbo have decided to set up two training formats for individuals wishing to focus on Sales & Business Development jobs: The Full Time Bootcamps (9 weeks). They are made up of experts in the field in order to bring together all the processes, methods and tools to be mastered, including the essentials to become Sales Ops.

At the end of the course, the Akimbers are 100% operational and ready to join their next adventure.

Bootcamps in a nutshell:

• A training based on a follow-up of commercial action on thethe entire sales cycle. Ranging from go-to-market to cold calling and complex selling. This training allows you to be operational on all fronts.
• The courses are carried out by Sales Coaches Owning more than one ten years of startup experience.
• Oriented training To practice : Sales Coaches, ensuring a good understanding of everyone. The last weeks of training are carried out at Station F, the Akimbers are put in a situation on behalf of real startups, it's a leap into the big picture.
• These courses are both available in person and remotely;
• Bootcamps are recommended by 98% of our Alumni ;
• Today, we have trained more than 220 Alumni ;

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Adapted conversion profiles

Chez Akimbo, we observed that there is no no typical profile to become Sales Ops. Depending on the industry, the requirements expected from Sales Ops differ from business to business.

Generally, current Sales Ops have a career as a consultant with an ability to demonstrate an appetite for Sales or a Parcours de Sales with an ability to demonstrate analytical qualities or a marketing journey with a good CRM knowledge.

At the margin, profiles from The world of finance See Ops.

It is therefore not the path of a future Sales Ops that necessarily determines the ability to become a good one, but rather the qualities/skills that he was able to develop in his previous jobs.

What career developments are there for this position?

After a few years of experience as Sales Ops, candidates may aim to evolve by level into jobs such as:

• Lead Sales Ops;
• Sales Operations Manager;
• Chief Operating Officer (COO);
• Head of Sales.

If you are looking for a challenge, you can open up to another region or to the world by integrating an international or multi-regional structure.

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What is the salary for a Sales Ops?

How much does a Sales Ops earn?

On average, the Sales Operations salaries revolve around 45 k€ gross annual.

Junior Sales Ops Salary

A Junior Sales Ops, at the beginning of their career, can expect a salary around 40 k€ gross per year.

Senior Sales Ops Salary

A Senior Sales Ops, after 5 years of experience, receives a salary of 60 k€ to 80 k€ gross annual.

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The different jobs Sales Operations

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The titles you need to know

• Sales Ops Manager
• Sales Ops Representative
• Sales Ops Analyst
• Director of Sales Operations

What is a Sales Operations Manager?

As with Sales Ops, a Sales Operations Manager is responsible for developing and overseeing an effective sales process to enable the growth of the organizations they support. Except that he is in charge of several Sales Ops.

What is a Sales Operations Analyst?

A Sales Ops Analyst improves sales processes by evaluating and organizing data and by supporting Finance, Marketing, and Sales departments.

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Our advice for entering the right job offer

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Finding a Sales Ops Job

Like a good Sales Ops, Don't waste your time to look for the right job offer on the internet. Start by selecting recognized platforms that review offers before publishing them. This will prevent you from wasting time with offers that are lacking in information.

When faced with an offer, carefully read the presentation of the position and the missions. You will already know at this stage if the offer is relevant and above all credible. It should follow a logical sequence, with sufficient information and data.

In particular, we are thinking of:

• The team and the management style : vision, values and ambitions;
• The sector of activity : marketplace, health, food industry, home delivery service, finance,...;
• Business size : number of employees, possible fundraising,...;
• Personal support : onboarding, internal training,...;
• Company culture : afterworks, Team Buildings, etc...

But also about the position:

• The responsibilities of the position;
• The missions;
• The tools used;
• The sales cycle.

With this set of best practices, you will determine if you can be the profile you are looking for for the job. Even if you're missing a few requirements to meet, don't give up: determination and motivation are what make the difference in the vast majority of cases.

Find a Sales Ops internship or apprenticeship

The procedure is the same for finding an internship or an apprenticeship. Choose sectors that appeal to you and that interest you, and take advantage of this opportunity to have a concrete insight that will allow you to form your opinion. Doing internships is best guide your search for a first job in the future.

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How do you recruit a good Sales Operations?

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Identifying a good Sales Operations profile

Building your Operations team is an increasing trend in most structures, especially in France. Wanting to hire a Sales Ops is highly competitive and not an easy job. Depending on your sector of activity, it is essential to draw up a profile that matches your expectations.

Some points to explore that represent positive signals:

• Analytical ability : is he able to break down a problem, analyze it in order to quickly understand situations and make the right decisions?
• Communication qualities : Does it convey a message in a synthetic, clear and comprehensive way?
• Is he Strength of proposal ?
• Does he have this thoroughness and organizing Good Sales Ops?
• Does he know how to master tools like a CRM, Excel ?

To help you, develop a Business game or practical case focused on Sales Ops with an anonymized CRM export, by proposing a problem and by asking candidates to produce analyses.

To find the Sales Ops you need, and beyond job offers, Hunt on LinkedIn profiles with backgrounds similar to those mentioned above. You can also do contact points with Sales Ops influencers like the Akimbo community, our Sales Coaches, or even the Slack community Business Operations Network.

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