Here's how you can excel as a Sales Operations professional.

The biggest and foremost requirement for success as sales operations professional, is "Discipline". CRM, data analysis, process optimization, etc are the tools to effectively deliver if one has Discipline. Continuously eager to learn more. Enjoy meeting people and solving their problems. Hunger to dream big. In a nutshell, attitude is what makes a person successful in any field. Anticipate the bottlenecks in process while collaborating with cross functional teams and come up with a solution before it bursts.

To truly excel in Sales Operations, you've gotta dig deep. Look beyond the surface-level tips and dive into the nitty-gritty of CRM mastery, process optimization, data analysis, cross-functional collaboration, training, and continuous improvement. It's about honing each skill like a craftsman perfecting their trade.

CRM as the main source of truth for a Sales/Sales Ops teams. Keep it tidy up to avoid bad data is the most important thing to do in order to have a meaningful impact at your corporation. In order to be able to do so you need to deeply understand all intricate fields, automations and relations within your CRM. Focus on the training path available (most of CRMs have one) and master it. Show your improvement from reports and dashboards. Do not be tied up to only dashboards available from the platform itself, go beyond.

Well, from my years in the game, what's often overlooked in excelling at Sales Operations is the finesse of communication. It's not just about data and systems; it's about fostering relationships and understanding the dynamics at play. So, here's the kicker: invest time in honing those soft skills, like active listening and empathy. They're the secret sauce to unlocking collaboration and driving results. Trust me, been there, done that, got the T-shirt.

To optimize process you need to truly and deeply understand it first. Why these process are necessary, what value do they bring, how they add in a daily basis. Who are the clients, what they expect from it? Only after going deep on those questions and items you can try to propose enhancements. You can only improve what you understand.

Automation is a great way to improve existing processes. If you don’t know where to start, always begin with the actual data - audit and standardize existing inputs. Once you’ve got everything matching in all tools and systems, you can start linking them. In today’s world, it’s so easy to use AI and other internet resources to help get ideas on how to streamline things.

Data is paramount to drive actionable insights for strategy execution. However, it is important to understand that process of data usage and accuracy of data in the repository may it be CRM. Not all data might be useful, therefore it is important to focus on models which utilize underlying data for analysis, for which data cleansing is very important. Usually the systems capturing data are not updated regularly and therefore leads to analysis anomalies.

Data, data and more data. Sales Operations are data-driven, it is in its core. Live it, eat it. Understand your audience, what they want to see, how they wanna see it, where they wanna see, how they'll interact with it. Only mastering CRMs, processes and tour audience you can transform data into information. You need to fully understand your business in order to correctly filter your data. Data is owned by people and people make mistakes with it, it is your function too to filter and mitigate those errors.

Cross functional collaboration is perhaps the most critical skill, any sales operations professional can master. Without effective cross functional collaboration, it’s impossible to get projects over the fence. Having the skills to work proactively with other department leaders and peers in one’s organization is critical. For example, sales operations needs to work very closely with marketing and just as closely with project and project management teams, implementations, and customers success.

Sales Ops is a support team and as any support team you cannot work as a standalone island within your organization. Sales Ops have internal clients but it is still an internal client. They do not own all systems and depends on others to have available data. It get worse on big companies, everything is compartmentalized. Be gentle and know your suppliers of information and work with them in order to make their life easier too, understand their challenges and goals and build strong relations with them.

Always drive sales enablement by equiping sales teams with the resources, tools, and support needed to perform at their best. Provide access to relevant content, training materials, and real-time data to help sales reps close deals more effectively. Stay informed about industry trends when you keep up to date with the latest sales operations best practices, emerging technologies, and industry trends. Attend conferences, webinars, and training sessions to expand your knowledge and maintain a competitive edge.