Sales Ops in 2011 faces a number of situations that has the function questioning its very mission and purpose. This identity crisis is stemming from:

1)     Many groups spending the last 10 years becoming master project managers without any form of master strategic vision

2)     The cost of supporting a complex sale dramatically increasing, thereby changing the nature and scale of enablement required

3)     Perhaps now more than ever, a rep can absolutely nail the prescribed account strategy, and still lose the deal.  The perfectly refined playbook Sales Ops has nurtured for years increasingly feels insufficient for navigating the complex sales environment.

The first two problems are rooted in the same place: the strategic mission of most Sales Ops groups was never fully clarified.  The initial charter was most often a reactive response to some fire that needed putting out.  The sales force got bogged down in too much admin so the sales org brought in a few people from operations to run six sigma analyses.  Or goal was missed three quarters in a row – enter in a few finance people to work on forecasting – and, poof, you have a Sales Ops organization.

Over time, the group grew in direct proportion to new projects it was assigned – its scope and definition for success necessarily evolved.  This hodgepodge evolution pigeonholed the team as project managers. 

Organizing around projects (e.g. process redesign has the process people, CRM roll-out has the tools people, etc.) created ambiguity on role boundaries, especially once those projects ended.  And getting really good here proved counterproductive, as other parts of the organization began pushing over seemingly any project management work on any task without clear ownership.  This bogged Sales Ops leadership down on tactical initiatives and prevented time being allocated to higher-order strategic level assistance to the sales leadership team.

Not surprisingly, the hodgepodge approach handcuffed organizations from both fully recognizing a need for change and executing the shift.  Specifically, by the time it became evident today’s complex sale requires different-in-kind types of collaboration and support, it was clear many Sales Ops groups weren’t set up to support the new world.

Back office support used to mean automating the non-value add activities of the sales force.  Increasingly, it means providing customer-facing expertise to manage overly complex deal dynamics.  But many sales ops charters are grounded in a mission of elimination (theory: removing obstacles frees up rep time).  Time isn’t the issue anymore, though.  So asking groups that are staffed and funded to eliminate time sinks to switch gears and ADD support in unfamiliar terrain (like creating a deal desk) calls to question capacity, ability, and, perhaps most importantly, resourcing.

Those successful at breaking this self-reinforcing cycle learned the hard way to organize around outcomes, not initiatives.  Sales Ops should be considered the strategic execution arm of the sales organization.  Success should be defined as improvement against the strategic plan year over year.  Teams should be organized around the outcomes necessary to achieve success against that plan.  As one example, a plan that calls for better insight analysis may result in teams that can run numbers and build tools that reflect that analysis.

But while this operating theory provides a flexible framework from which to pivot, this still leaves open the question about what exactly an organization might look like in today’s world of sales.  When the status quo becomes as big a source of competition as your competitors, there are no guarantees you can predict the way a customer will make a decision.

This is heresy for a head of Sales Ops, with an organization full of process mavens.  How can I create a plan to provide support if the support necessary is unpredictable?  The less successful attempts will likely waste lots of effort pushing for 100% adoption of a process that very likely does not reflect the way customers want to buy – in large part because customers themselves doesn’t know how they purchase.

Part of the answer will lie in identifying how the best reps navigate through to a decision.  But how should a head of Sales Ops think about organizing the team?

In my next post, I’ll posit an informed hypothesis about the composition of this new vision for Sales Ops.  In the interim, I’d love to hear thoughts on ways to persevere against the identity crisis.

Related posts:

1. Finding and Developing Sales Ops Talent
2. Measuring the Value of Sales Ops
3. Is Your Sales Ops Function Commoditizing Sales?
4. Don’t Strive For 100% Sales Tool Adoption
5. Can We Avoid an Arms Race with Customers?