In a SellingBrew Playbook tutorial entitled, “Building a Sales Ops Center of Excellence,” the author highlights the potential for sales ops to go well-beyond tactical support and play a much more critical and strategic role:
Conceptually and functionally, sales ops represents a sort of nexus between the sales team and all of the other functions in a company. As such, it can be a powerful leverage-point for driving the improvements in sales effectiveness that result in significant revenue and profitability gains.
And to help enable this transformation, the author outlines a process for creating a “Center of Excellence” around sales operations.
At first, this may seem like just putting the same old shoe inside a shiny new box. But the author also provides a side-by-side comparison chart that illustrates 12 key differences between a traditional sales operations function and a sales operations center of excellence.
Here is just one of the 12 areas of difference highlighted in the tutorial:
| Traditional Sales Ops Function | Sales Ops Center of Excellence |
| Focuses primarily on the tactical—the “how” of getting things done and working through the daily “to-do” list. | Focuses on the strategic as well—the “who”, “what”, “when”, “where” and “why” behind the overall sales strategy. |
Tactical support is important, no doubt. After all, things have to get done.
But when you focus on the strategic aspects of your sales operation you’re not only getting things done, but you’re also making sure that they’re the right things to do in the first place.
And just that one difference can make all the difference when it comes to overall sales effectiveness and efficiency.
So, if you’ve never considered applying the center of excellence model to sales ops, you should check it out. And if you think that it’s just a different name for the same old thing? Well, you should think again.
Because a sales operations center of excellence is different…very different.
