Sales Operations 101

Imagine a team of astronauts who just successfully touched down on the moon. They didn’t get there on their own. The mission control team on the ground supported them every step of the way, ensuring the rocket took off and landed smoothly. They strategized, analyzed, and trained to make it all possible.

That’s what sales operations does for sales. Sales ops professionals equip sales teams with the tools and processes they need to shoot for the stars.

J. Patrick Kelly, who founded the first sales operations team at Xerox, described the nascent field as taking care of “all the nasty number things that you don’t want to do, but need to do to make a great sales force.”

Fast-forward nearly 50 years and the role is as vital as it ever was, but still difficult to precisely define. Sales leaders might find themselves asking: What is sales ops? How does it help me make more strategic choices? Scale my processes better? Get my product to market faster? What exactly is the return on investment? Look no further than this sales operations guide.