How Do You Measure Sales Operations?

Recently Clari hosted a Sales Ops Edge virtual event with an excellent panel of experienced and talented sales operations leaders.  Clari’s events are practical and thought-provoking.  The company recognizes the strategic nature and evolution of sales operations, and is building a product and community to meet these needs.  Their events reflect this mindset and I always take a new learning away.

When asked “how do you measure sales operations?” the panelists responded with 1) sales productivity and 2) happiness, or satisfaction, by the sales team.

Happiness helps build morale of sales operations teams.  Sales operations, enablement, and productivity teams feel an affiliation to the sales team.  They usually like rescue situations and aren’t afraid of the hard work and fast response times to support an account exec, a quarter close, or a big deal.

Sociological and psychological studies indicate that  happiness and fulfillment are instrumental to productivity.But, you can’t take “sales happiness” to the CEO or CFO and ask for investments in programs, technology, or headcount.  Sales happiness is anecdotal and fickle.

What metrics and KPI's do you use to measure Sales Operations?

A Different Measure for Sales Operations

I prefer to implement a cadence of measuring Sales Confidence (not self-confidence).  By asking for input, or the voice of the field regularly through a consistent listening instrument, you can measure trends in:

• Confidence of sales reps in meeting or exceeding their quota or sales goals
• Confidence in the product or service, the company, sales leadership
• Confidence in the tools and skills and ability to sell the solution
• Perceived inhibitors
• Perceived needs and requirements to success

Why Confidence?  

By directly asking about the sales team’s confidence in achieving goals, you can measure their state of mind as they are tackling their territory.  I could argue this also feeds into engagement, but I would want to do more research to determine if any cause-effect.

Timing and Cadence

When you measure and take a sales confidence pulse is critical.  I recommend before the fiscal year to get input for sales planning, sales meetings and kick-offs.  Ask the question in feedback surveys after kick-off, large trainings, and productivity programs.  Mid-year, ask again.

Reporting

A critical element is reporting out.  Prepare a report on the findings and share it with sales leadership, marketing, executive leadership -- and most important, the field.  Tell them what you heard and what the sales operations and enablement teams and the company are doing to address the perceived inhibitors.  

Dig into Details

Finally, dig into the details with sales operations, training, enablement, and sales strategy & productivity all together to develop your plan and roadmap.  Set a Sales Confidence goal for the coming year.

Make the Case for Leading Indicators

The next stage is to tie those who had high confidence in achieving goals with actual attainment.  This will require 1-2 years of data to reflect trending.  But, you can use the sales confidence data even before you can analyze it against attainment or productivity.

You’ll find Confidence is also a good metric for your programs and operations teams as a “compass”.  True story -- the first time I used Sales Confidence as a key metric was for an annual sales kick-off meeting.  We measured before and after and asked the worldwide team what they needed.  Throughout planning, we came back to Sales Confidence.  The tone of the week was energetic and exciting.  So much so that a market analyst observing and talking with participants upgraded the stock with a report that cited the confidence in the field and channel partners as a key reason!

As sales operations leaders become more strategic for the  company, they must also have clear metrics for themselves.  How many times are you asked this?  On your dashboard, alongside sales productivity, compliance and SLA’s, and milestones -- consider including Sales Confidence.

What metrics and KPI's to you use to measure the effectiveness and ROI of Sales Operations?