TOP 7 Sales OPS Initiatives for Q2 2024

This January Xactly once again announced the results of its “2024 Sales Compensation Report.” The report focuses on sales goals and quotas, which are currently the biggest challenge.

There’s a significant gap between the quota and the actual achievements of Account Executives. Despite this happening for 3 years in a row already, I’ve learned a shocking insight…

The report states that 91% of surveyed companies do not believe their teams’ AEs meet quota.

Similarly, last year, Guy Rubin, CEO of Ebsta in Boston, shared that by analyzing 3 million Sales Opportunities from clients’ Salesforce / HubSpot, they found that “70% of sales reps are missing their targets”.

Let’s explore how Sales Ops can help the team actually achieve their set goals.

1 First, ICP

Despite everything being written down and approved by marketing “five times over,” with MRKT. I highly recommend conducting a repeat analysis of the past year and checking whether the portrait of REAL companies that purchased the service/product in 2023 matches the portrait of potential leads generated by the Demand Gen team, etc.

Also, pay attention to titles — who we think makes decisions and how it actually unfolded last year.

2 Second, check Data Accuracy, Funnel, IB/OB ratio, and Conversion Rates

• How lead enters, what attributes it receives;
• Which Lead Source; Inbound/Outbound ratio;
• Whether sales generated separately/independently by sales are mixed in conversions, etc.
• Whether there are errors due to manual data entry;
• Automate the collection of all events and tasks. Everything is possible and impossible because people will always create data errors.
• Every data field must be clearly regulated; don't give up
• Having all the conversions Lead-MQL-SQL-Close Won Deal compared with market benchmarks.

3 Third, identify and manage Sales pipeline slippage

In short, you have an expected timeframe within which an Opportunity goes through all stages and converts into a Close Won Deal. At some stage, an Opportunity may start to linger longer, and if this happens, the team will see the negative consequences only in the next quarter and, of course, will not meet the plan. This can be checked with cohort analysis. For example, your Sales Velocity is 45 days. Take the SQLs generated in January and see what was won and what is still in the open pipeline. Then, you analyze the pattern of delays, etc.

4 British salespeople say that sales can be increased by up to +60% thanks to Intend Data.

I don’t know about 60%. It depends on the niche and approach. But if all processes are already well set up, I recommend adding Intent Campaigns to prioritize leads seeking solutions. It would also be great to capture First-Party Intent directly from your website. I can write an article how where..

5 Control Customer Relation Consistency

This is a multifunctional task that requires creativity. Essentially, you track and calculate the minimum number and type of communications necessary for signing a deal or for continuing cooperation with all positive outcomes, like Additional MRR. Next, you build a system of notifications like sales need to call/write because the client is about to churn, etc.

6 Do Call analytics with AI

For example, Company X determined that as soon as a sales call mentions competitor names or pushes for signing sooner within XYZ days because the quota is burning… Opportunity Close Won probability drops by -50%. So.. Define hypotheses — validate — find a pattern — monitor — automate

7 Make sure AEs lose opportunities at the earliest stage possible

Exactly, the better AEs qualify, the better the forecast is executed, and the more AEs pay attention to worthy opportunities, etc. So we make a report and look at Stage Before Closure (if it doesn’t exist, you need to create one)

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If the article was engaging you or at least was helpful — write a comment about which initiative you liked the most 1,2,3,4,5,6,7…?

Tell me which topic you would like to explore in more detail.