What Does a Sales Operations Manager Do?

At their core, salespeople only want to do one thing: sell. But while technology presents salespeople with new efficiencies and opportunities, it also comes with major challenges. CRM data needs to be kept clean, managers need access to the data they need to make intelligent decisions, and the right sales technology stack has to be implemented and adopted. Enter the sales operations manager, who can help your sales team run like a well-oiled machine.

What is a Sales Operations Manager?

A sales operations manager is your resident sales technology expert and a master of efficiency. While a sales operations manager might have many roles (which roles continue to expand), at its core, the duties can be summarized as:

• Manage CRM data
• Improve productivity by evaluating and implementing sales technology
• Help sales leaders make data-driven decisions
• Work with marketing to enable salespeople

Let’s examine each of those to see how sales operations managers can add tremendous value.

Leverage CRM Systems

There are thousands of ways to leverage CRM systems, and every company can do it differently. A great sales operations manager is the key to a successful CRM implementation. They can also ensure that CRM continues to work optimally for sales as time goes on. A sales operations manager might manage lead lists, ensure that fields are updated correctly, find and delete duplicate leads, manage custom fields, manage the API, handle lead assignment rules, automation, and more.

Evaluate and Implement a Sales Stack

There are many, many ways to improve sales team efficiency. Sales acceleration tools can help reps connect with more prospects, automatically log data in CRM, route inbound callers to the right reps, prioritize sales leads, leverage email templates, and predict which companies to target. But, different tools will suit different organizations. Sales operations managers can add value by evaluating and implementing the solutions can offer solve problems and work well together. They can develop and manage a sales technology stack that’s right for your business.

Help Sales Leaders Make Smart Decisions

Sales operations managers contribute a significant amount of value by creating the right dashboards for your organization. Different companies need and care about different metrics. Therefore, sales operations managers can ensure that the right reports and dashboards are in place to provide sales leaders with the ability to make informed decisions. Sales operations managers can help leaders visualize data from Salesforce, marketing automation tools and other platforms to fit their company’s individual needs.

Partner with Marketing to Enable Sales

Marketers love creating awesome content for salespeople to use. The trouble is that salespeople often don’t know what content is available or how to effectively leverage content in the sales process. Sales operations managers can partner with marketers in order to help ensure that reps know how to successfully utilize content like eBooks, case studies, blogs and videos. They then can help create tools so that sales can easily access and employ them.

Great dashboards are paramount to successful sales operations. Check out our guide to the 7 most important Salesforce dashboards.