Novelist G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “Unless a particular man made New Year Resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.”
A lot of the sales ops teams that we hear from on a regular basis seem to be taking Chesterton’s words to heart this year. With the start of the new year and new decade, they’re making plans for kicking off huge new initiatives.
Almost all these sales ops projects will need to start in the same way — getting buy-in from management. And after that, of course, the team will face the huge hurdle of figuring out the best way to tackle the actual initiative.
Having been through this process a whole lot of times, we know exactly how challenging it can be. And we have some resources that can help — both with “selling” the idea internally as well as with identifying best practices for the project itself.
As you get started, we recommend taking a look at the webinar on Selling Your Sales Ops Initiative. It offers a guideline to help you build the business case for your project and identifies ten things you need to understand about how management decides whether or not to greenlight proposals. It also points out some common mistakes you’ll want to avoid.
After that, you’ll probably want to take a look at some of the resources that deal with your particular plan. Here are seven of the most common types of initiatives we’re hearing about this year, as well as links that provide more information about each:
- Negotiation Training — Most of your customers have probably provided their buyers with advanced training on how to get the best deal. Arm your sales force by explaining the tactics and tricks they are likely to encounter.
Exposing the Secrets of Sales Negotiation will help you set up your own negotiation education program and teach you how to “rig” the process in your favor. - Data-Driven Forecasting — As human beings, our guesses about what the future will bring are almost always wrong. But modern analytics allows us to move beyond guesswork and create data-driven predictions that are much more accurate. Check out Developing Better Forecasts to see how other teams are approaching forecasting differently and to learn some new approaches.
- Price Optimization — Changing your prices by a small amount can have an outsized effect on your bottom line, but few people really understand what pricing optimization is and how to do it right. All About Price Optimization introduces you to the core concepts and explains how today’s software streamlines the process. It also highlights some common myths and misconceptions you’ll need to avoid.
- Predictive Sales Analytics — Modern data analytics software can be a game-changer when it comes to improving sales. But the concepts underlying the technology can be confusing and difficult to master. Find out how to make this technology work for you by watching the Predictive Sales Analytics webinar. It explains what other sales operations teams are doing well — and where some of them have gone wrong.
- Sales Compensation Revamp — Changing the way your sales team gets paid can make a dramatic impact on what and how much they sell — dramatically positive if you get it right and dramatically negative if you get it wrong. Improving Sales Compensation to Boost Results offers some battle-tested advice that has worked well for organizations, and it can help you sidestep some of the most common gotchas.
- Account-Based Marketing & Sales — You’ve probably heard a lot of hype about ABM. The Realities of Account-Based Marketing and Sales explains what’s new — and not-so-new — about this approach and offers some guidelines for figuring out if it will work for your situation. It also explains the critical principles you’ll need to get right if you want to succeed with account-based marketing and sales.
- Whitespace Identification — Sometimes the most important information you can glean from your data is what isn’t there. The Whitespace Analytics webinar explains how to find hidden opportunities that would otherwise go unnoticed. It includes a seven-step process for prioritizing your findings and turning them into action items that can help improve your bottom line.
If your New Year’s resolution project isn’t on this list, feel free to search our library for resources suited to your initiative. You can also shoot us any questions you have through the help desk. Happy New Year!
Selling Your Sales Ops Initiatives
With a positive economic outlook, companies today are much more willing to invest in their capabilities and infrastructure. How should you craft, package, and pitch your initiative to get the go-ahead from management?
Exposing the Secrets of Sales Negotiation
How do you protect yourself when your sellers are so outmatched in negotiations? How do you keep them from falling for every trick in the book? And what does your Sales Ops team need to know to provide another layer of protection?
Developing Better Forecasts
In this on-demand webinar, learn about the seven major ways in which leading teams are approaching sales forecasting very differently to boost speed, accuracy, and overall performance and results.
All About Price Optimization
As more sales teams start turning to price optimization, it certainly helps to have a strong understanding of how it actually works and how it leverages elasticity and other metrics to calculate optimal prices.
Predictive Sales Analytics
Predictive sales analytics has proven to be a powerful tool for improving effectiveness and boosting results at-scale. In this on-demand webinar, we demystify the core concepts and applications in sales environments.
Improving Sales Compensation to Boost Results
It's hard to devise a comp plan that nails the objectives without a bunch of unintended consequences. In this webinar, learn about strategies and tactics for more effective sales incentives and compensation plans.
Exploring Account-Based Marketing and Sales
While the promise of account-based marketing and sales is certainly compelling, it's important to get beyond the hype and understand what ABM really is and what it can really do for you and your company.
Conducting Whitespace Analytics
What if there was a way to analyze all of your customers at once, identify the whitespace opportunities, and serve them up to the sales team on a platter? Learn the seven step process for doing just that.
