Have you ever taken a personality test? I’m not talking about the ones you find on the Internet that tell you which Game of Thrones character you’re most like or what your spirit animal is, I’m talking about a real, scientifically valid personality test.
Psychologists sometimes give their clients a test called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which divides humanity up into sixteen different types based on four different criteria:
- Introversion vs. extraversion
- Sensing vs. intuition
- Thinking vs. feeling
- Judging vs. perceiving
In the sensing vs. intuition category, people who are “sensing” focus on the details. They get highly involved in the minutiae of everyday life, and they rarely think about the bigger picture. People in the “intuition” category are exactly the opposite. They like to think about life’s big questions and couldn’t care less if their socks match or not.
What does all this have to do with the most important concept in sales ops?
Successful sales ops teams are those that are able to take that big picture view. They see the sales process as an interconnected whole, not as the product of a bunch of random individual efforts. They can see how everything within sales works together like an enormous machine. And if something goes wrong, they don’t assume that a single salesperson made a mistake, they look for a problem in the overarching system.
The bad news is that psychologists tell us only 25 percent of us naturally prefer taking the big picture view. The vast majority of us can’t see the forest for the trees.
But the good news is that psychologists also tell us we can learn to be big picture thinkers, even if that’s not our natural personality.
That’s important because viewing sales as an interconnected system makes everything else easier. In our opinion, it is likely the single most important sales ops concept.
Consider: if you see a problem as the result of an individual salesperson’s action, you’ll probably address the problem with that individual. That approach might seem effective at first, but you’ll probably have the same problem crop up again with another salesperson. And then another. Before you know it, you’re spending all your time putting out small fires that keep blazing up over and over again.
On the other hand, if you can visualize problems as a breakdown in your sales machine, you can address the root cause. Instead of seeing that a salesperson made a mistake, you’ll see that your training process or your prospecting process or your lead nurturing process broke down. Then you can address the problem with the process and prevent the same mistake from endlessly repeating.
So the next time someone comes to you with a problem, ask yourself where the process went wrong. If you aren’t sure, ask more questions and drill down until you find the root cause. This approach might take some practice before it starts to feel natural, but over time, it will greatly reduce the amount of repeat work you have to do, and it will help your sales ops team be more effective.
Of course, seeing sales as an interconnected whole is just one of many key concepts in sales ops. To learn 14 more, check out the webinar on Crucial Sales Ops Concepts.
Crucial Sales Operations Concepts
What sets a great Sales Ops team apart often comes down the core concepts and principles they embrace. In this on-demand webinar, you'll learn about 15 fundamental concepts that every Sales Ops leader and practitioner needs to understand inside and out.
