Given some of the recent questions we’ve been getting in our live sessions and through our Help Desk facility, I feel compelled to address the elephant in the room in this much broader forum…
Right now, there’s an undercurrent of anxiety among many Sales Ops practitioners around the topic of job security.
And frankly, it’s understandable. After years of pandemic disruptions, supply chain meltdowns, inflation spikes, regional war impacts, global trade tensions, and general macroeconomic uncertainty, companies are resorting to the old standbys: cost-cutting, streamlining, and restructuring, all in an attempt to find some measure of stability and control.
Meanwhile, it’s hard not to notice that big uptick in LinkedIn activity from peers and colleagues. And it’s even harder to ignore all the doom-and-gloom headlines circulating in the business media. Budget cuts. Hiring freezes. Sell offs. Roll ups. Reorgs. Layoffs.
So yes, the anxiety is real. But before jumping to worst-case conclusions, it helps to step back and consider the broader picture. Because while some Sales Ops practitioners are indeed getting caught in the corporate churn, the full story is a bit more nuanced. And in many cases, the full story is a lot more encouraging.
Here are three truths about job security in Sales Operations:
1. Yes, Some Companies Are Really Getting Hammered
There’s no point sugarcoating the realities of the situation. Some companies are bearing the brunt of everything that’s been piling up and piling on. Inflation has gutted their margins and dampened demand. Supply disruptions have turned planning into a guessing game. Trade tensions and geopolitical instability have complicated everything from pricing to fulfillment. And higher interest rates have killed any hope of investing in critical capabilities or infrastructure.
For these companies, the cumulative effect has been too much. They’re missing targets, losing key customers, and scrambling to fund inventory and make payroll. And as corporate leadership goes into survival mode, few groups are spared in the cost-cutting frenzy.
So yes, in some sectors and in certain companies, layoffs are a gut-wrenching reality. And no, it doesn’t always make sense who gets cut or why.
2. The Need for Sales Ops Expertise Has Never Been Greater
The paradox here is that the dynamics that have been crushing some organizations are forcing others to finally get serious about maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of their sales machines. In trying to deal with all of the chaos and uncertainty, more and more leadership teams are now realizing just how much waste, inefficiency, and guesswork is embedded in their sales operations.
And who are they turning to for help? The Sales Ops pros who actually know how to untangle the mess and put scalable systems and processes in place to provide clarity, improve consistency, and boost results in a big way.
Most sales functions still struggle with forecast timeliness and accuracy. They’re still dealing with pipelines full of garbage. They’re still pushing one-size-fits-all playbooks and one-off, anecdotal hacks. They’re still incentivizing the wrong behaviors. They’re still designing or assigning territories with no realistic assessment of the opportunity. And for the most part, they’re still guessing on what’s really working and what’s not.
So…while some companies are trimming headcount to hit short-term numbers or simply survive, others are finally waking up to the fact that Sales Ops is the key to wringing much more performance out of the sales machine.
3. The Strategic Fundamentals of Sales Ops Are Transferable
The most important truth here is that no matter what happens with your current job at your current company, understanding the fundamentals of strategic Sales Ops and knowing how to leverage them to generate improved results gives you a lot of career security. And no matter what industry you’re in, the business model, or the technology platforms you’re using right now, the fundamentals are highly transferable and will travel with you.
If you know how to clean up a broken forecasting process and deliver the kind of timely visibility that management can actually trust, that’s valuable in any business. If you can turn customer purchasing patterns into predictive insights and retention risk signals, you’re solving a universal problem. If you’ve figured out how to partner with sales leaders without getting steamrolled or ignored, that’s a skill in high demand.
And if you know how to improve sales rep productivity, shorten sales cycles, reduce churn, improve customer lifetime value, and raise quota attainment through targeted operational improvements? Well, you’ll never be unemployed for long.
Because no matter the industry, every commercial team wants to do more with less, move faster, and waste fewer opportunities. And that’s what strategic Sales Ops is all about.
Get Beyond Job Security and Focus on Your Career
The thing is you can’t really control whether your company ultimately decides to reorganize, consolidate, cut costs and headcount, or just hunker down and hope. But you can control how valuable you are to any employer, current or future.
So instead of obsessing over job security, work to enhance your career security by doubling down on the transferable Sales Ops skills that can make you effective in any environment.
Go deep on the strategic fundamentals and don’t just coast on the tactical stuff. Become more fluent in comparative sales analytics, multidimensional forecasting, territory and quota design, pipeline and customer health diagnostics, and sales technology utilization and optimization. Get good at identifying bottlenecks in the sales process and removing them. Learn how to work cross-functionally and influence organizational change without having direct authority.
And most of all, stay focused on results. Because when you become the person who can drop into a messy sales operation and quickly figure out how to systematically improve revenue generation and profit production, you’ll always have options and you won’t stay jobless for long.
In fact, you’ll likely find yourself in a better place than before.
Earning Sales Ops a Seat At the Table
In this session, learn how leading teams have bridged the gap between just executing the plans that are handed down by others and actually having a hand in developing those plans in the first place.
Developing Sales Ops Leaders
How do we develop the next generation of sales ops leaders? How do we equip our team members to take on more responsibility? And how do we do it all as a matter of course rather than as an afterthought?
Aligning Sales Ops to Business Strategy
How do you ensure that your sales operation and the overall business strategy are properly aligned? And what do you do when there's a disconnect?
