Don't Underestimate the Value of Sales Operations Processes

One of the keys to a successful company is a knowledgeable productive sales organization. 
Behind every great sales team are the unsung heroes. 

There is an organization the Sales team needs in their back pockets, an effective Sales Operations team.
 
A 9/11/15 article by Peter Helmer in Business2Community.com titled “Why an Effective Sales Operations Team is the Key to Sales Success” lays out quite clearly but succinctly the six areas of focus.

• Sales Strategy
• Sales Tools
• Sales Programs
• Sales Processes
• Sales Analytics and Measurements
• Sales Training

These areas are quite broad and impactful to the sales organization. The skill sets required are growing in sophistication in both breadth and depth.  I have found that efforts for Processes are often under-vested arms of Sales Operations.  Process is defined as “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.” 

These need to be not just intuitive, but defined, methodical, tested, and simple as possible to follow.   If not,  you are rewarded with lost sales, productivity problems, sales team frustrations, and make shift actions taken outside the process just to make things happen. The latter is especially troubling because it contributes to a downward spiral of process credibility and chaos. 
 
The solution is to adequately invest in trained resources whose day time jobs are to define and create effective processes with detailed documentation, change management and adoption training.    Process development outputs cannot just be a few PowerPoints, Word Docs and a mass email notification.   People will do the right thing if they are aware, understand the benefits, and properly trained.  Invest upfront on the fundamentals, and increase the likelihood of yielding dividends from an efficient sales team.

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