If you're a professional who is interested in becoming a director of sales operations, congratulations! You've already taken the first step toward an exciting and rewarding career. In this guide, we'll discuss what it takes to become a director of operations for sales and why this role can be so fulfilling.
Director of Sales Operations is a managerial position that requires not only strong leadership skills, but also the ability to effectively manage many different aspects of business.
To become director of sales you must have excellent communication and organizational skills. You will need to be able to work with people at all levels in your company - from management staff to frontline employees.
As director of sales operations, you'll oversee the day-to-day operation of an enterprise's entire sales department including customer service representatives, account executives, merchandisers and other professionals who are responsible for generating leads or converting prospects into customers.
Directors of sales operations are responsible for developing and implementing business strategies, goals, objectives and action plans. They also have to work closely with marketing teams to ensure that campaigns are successful in meeting their stated goals.
Directors of sales operations must have at least a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience. Whether operations is your first role within a company or is a new position you've been given, it's important that you have the necessary experience.
In most organizations director of sales salaries are competitive with those offered by other top-level managers and executives.
A sales operations salary can be anywhere from $100k to over six figures depending on several factors such as location, experience, and company size.
One of the first things to consider if you want to be a director of sales and operations is how much schooling you'll need. We discovered that 75.8% of sales and operations directors hold a bachelor's degree.
In terms of higher education, we discovered that 12.3 percent of sales and operations directors hold a master's degree.
Despite the fact that the majority of sales and operations directors have a college diploma, it is possible to become one with only a high school diploma or GED.
When looking into how to become a director of sales and operations, picking the right major is crucial.
When we looked into the most frequent majors for a director of sales and operations, we discovered that bachelor's and master's degrees were the most common.
Associate's degrees and high school diplomas are two more degrees that we frequently see on director of sales and operations resumes.
You might find that previous work experience will assist you in becoming a director of sales and operations.
Many director of sales and operations jobs, in fact, need prior expertise in a sales-related function. Many directors of sales and operations, on the other hand, have previously held positions such as sales manager or general manager.
- Attend a Sales Operations Training Program or find instructor-led director of sales training courses online - Gain experience in your field by working at an entry level job within Sales Operations
- Earn a bachelor's or master's degree in director of sales operations or a related field
- Gain relevant director of sales experience at your current company
- Consider signing up for director of business development training courses to increase knowledge and skills within this industry.
After following these steps, you may become director of sales, but it is important that you continue learning and developing your skills. You may be in sales operations, but you can still become director of business development. Imagine how much more success your organization will have if you are director of both .
MANAGER OF SALES OPERATIONS EXAMPLE 1: JOB DESCRIPTION
As a Sales Operations Manager, you will be a member of our Operations Team and will be in charge of providing day-to-day operational support as well as ownership of our CRM. Account Executives and Sales Managers/Enterprise Sales will receive reports from you.
C-Level representatives as well as monthly reports It is your obligation to ensure that the company's Sales KPI definitions are consistent.
You'll also collaborate with Finance, HR, and Sales to establish sales incentive programmes and pay plans to boost sales productivity.
What exactly are we on the lookout for?
3-5 years' experience as a subject matter expert in sales operations, with expertise in developing reports, streamlining procedures, training new personnel, and monitoring dashboards.
A bachelor's degree is required, with a technical or business background preferred.
Ability to comprehend high-level sales strategies, convert them into system and process needs, and assure local implementation and impact.
Advanced Excel abilities, as well as a thorough knowledge of other CRM applications, and email marketing tactics.
MANAGER OF SALES OPERATIONS JOB DESCRIPTION: EXAMPLE 2
As Sales Processes Manager, you'll be responsible for refining and scaling our sales operations so that you can serve our rapidly expanding customer base effectively and efficiently.
Manage the important tools and platforms for our sales process, such as CRM.
Participate in a company-wide search for and selection of a new CRM.
On behalf of Sales, oversee the move from the current CRM to the new CRM, which includes designing a transition plan, researching best practises, and executing changes.
Set up dashboards and reports in CRM and elsewhere to keep track of sales operations and cross-functional efficiency, as well as to highlight areas for improvement.
Research and manage Salesforce interfaces with other platforms including Zendesk, Looker, Mailchimp, and Heroku.
Identify, develop, and maintain non-CRM sales tools and systems that allow for efficient sales and cross-functional collaboration.
Train salespeople to use systems that boost sales efficiency, such as CRM and other sales operations tools..
Develop and maintain a library of standard reports that can be accessed across Sales.
In your director role, you'll manage the sales operations team to ensure they complete their duties in an effective and timely manner while serving as a contributing member of our leadership team.
You will focus on developing them through ongoing professional development opportunities. Finally, it's your job to ensure that the company's Sales KPI definitions are consistent.
You'll collaborate with finance, HR, and sales teams to establish sales incentive programmes--and pay plans--that will boost productivity throughout your organization. You should also be prepared for some travel within North America (up to 30%).
A director of operations is responsible for all day-to-day operations and management of a company or organization.
This may include hiring, training, budgeting and supervising employees as well as developing new business opportunities for the firm. Responsibilities generally require at least ten years experience in the field and excellent leadership skills.
The director must be able to work under pressure, often with tight deadlines, as well as delegate tasks to employees and meet strict deadlines.
In the director role, you should be able to handle multiple projects at once while still meeting your company's goals for revenue growth.
The sales operations manager's job description
A sales operations manager ensures that a sales operation runs well so that the sales manager may focus on managing the sales team.
This might mean a variety of things, but in many cases, a sales operations manager's responsibilities include managing sales data, producing sales reports, setting targets, and forecasting income.
They're also in charge of the sales technology stack and the pay strategies for the team.
1. Getting accurate, real-time visibility of team performance- and driving that visibility throughout the organization
If not, it’s time to start. Sales goals for individual sales reps are an important tool, but without team goals it’s difficult to track your team’s performance and report on their progress.
If you’re scaling up or expanding into new sales territories, managing the goals of a growing team (or multiple sales teams) may seem daunting—how are you supposed to keep track of team goals when you’re adding reps?
The trouble is, in order to receive that real-time data out of the CRM, you must update it as part of the sales process.
This is why a simple, easy-to-use CRM (with time-saving automation tools) is critical: you want your salespeople to use it every day so you can have the data you need to build your reports.
You won't be able to follow their progress or construct anything approximating an accurate prediction if the reps are entering sample data or not updating the CRM at all.
In terms of your own process, you'll need to collaborate with your sales manager and director of sales operations to determine which KPIs are most critical to track.
Because you have a rising number of sales reps, you don't need a lot of KPIs—just a few key ones that you can track across your entire sales organisation.
2. Comparing individual performances within a sales team
The director of sales operations is responsible for ensuring that the team meets its quotas and goals.
This means you'll need to set clear objectives so each member knows what they're aiming for, while still allowing them some latitude in how they get there.
You should also be able to see where certain members stand against their own individual targets—and compare them to other team members.
In order to do this, you'll need a clear picture of each member's performance so far—and will have to take into account qualitative factors as well.
For example: David might be selling twice as much as his colleague Susan but he hasn't been with the company quite as long and therefore doesn’t have as much responsibility.
You'll need a CRM that allows you to set up different profiles for each member so this information is easily visible—and attach notes or comments to individual deals, if necessary.
3. Improved forecasting to aid teamwork among your representatives
You must turn competitiveness into something beneficial to your team. You want them to compete as a team, but you also want to instil a desire in each of your reps to outperform themselves.
You can do this by making goals challenging and attainable, but not so easily achievable that they'll be met without much effort.
Another method that will help you focus your reps' competitive energy is cross-team competition.
This method might create healthy rivalry if you're in charge of many sales teams. Reps are free to be as competitive as they wish when their teams play.
It lowers the likelihood of animosity amongst people who have to work together every day. Add a leaderboard, points, or awards to make it more gamified.
4. Creating, communicating and compensating understandable goals
Your reps need a clear picture of what is expected of them. If they’re not 100% sure how to get there, it can make your job as director of sales operations incredibly difficult—and may result in lost deals and unhappy customers.
A good way around this issue is by creating training programs that outline the steps necessary for each representative to reach their targets.
The director is often responsible for creating training programs that outline the steps necessary for each representative to achieve his or her goals—including how long it should take them, what they need in order to accomplish this goal and tips on how they can improve performance.
Also consider whether you'd like to use a webinar platform to train your reps in small groups.
Another part of this process is making sure that the director and sales manager are on the same page with regards to goals. You'll need a CRM that allows you to set up different profiles for each director so they can follow everyone's progress—and attach notes or comments if necessary.
You can even use other types of materials to train your staff. For example, you can ask your director of sales to fill out open enrollment email templates to check if they're optimized and capable of keeping other employees engaged. They can then come up with ideas to improve this document, if necessary. This is a good exercise in creativity.
5. Choosing and maintaining the CRM and other sales tools
The director of sales operations is responsible for choosing and maintaining the CRM.
This involves working with your director of IT to decide which platform will work best, as well as training reps on how to use it most effectively.
This includes having them set up their profiles so they can track their individual performance—as mentioned above—and creating templates or playbooks that they can use to create more detailed notes.
A CRM that offers transparency about these things helps reps assess the quality of their prospects and convinces them that their work is being seen.
Alas, even the finest CRM can’t fix one issue: the occasional problem rep.
If one rep is holding back the team, you may consider moving them to a team that’s better suited for their skills.
This is a tough conversation to have, but a CRM can help. As a sales ops manager, you used the data from the CRM to pull the rep’s data and the team data—that’s how you discovered there was a problem.
Now you can use that data to keep your conversation from potentially devolving into a shouting match.
