You might never have heard of him, but in his time, Eddie Rickenbacker was one of the most famous Americans on the planet. He was a victorious race car driver, a World War I flying ace, and a highly successful businessman.
That amazing career gave him plenty of opportunities to experience the fickle nature of public acclaim. He once remarked,
When I was racing, I had learned that you can’t set stock in public adoration or your press clippings. By the time I was 26, I’d heard crowds of 100,000 scream my name, but a week later they couldn’t remember who I was. You’re a hero today and a bum tomorrow—hero to zero, I sometimes say.
Your resume might be slightly less impressive than Fast Eddie’s, but you’ve probably had a similar experience as a sales ops professional.
You spend months on a major initiative—a territory redesign, a new forecasting model, a comp plan overhaul. You roll it out. It works. Leadership is pleased. For a few weeks, sales ops is the hero.
Then it becomes “how things work.” Within 90 days, nobody remembers who built it or why it was hard.
It’s not that your team is ungrateful. It’s just that your improvements work so well that they quickly get absorbed into the metabolism of the organization.
It’s a frustrating paradox: the better your work is, the faster it becomes invisible.
Getting the attention you deserve
You probably didn’t choose your career for the glory, but getting acknowledgement for your hard work is more than just a nice-to-have. You need upper management to remember what you do so that they have a reason to approve your requests for more headcount or funding. Even more importantly, their awareness of your contributions can help your team get a seat at the table when strategic decisions are being made.
So what can you do?
We’ve seen leading teams take the following steps to help build sustained visibility:
- Measuring the before and after. Before the initiative kicks off, leading sales ops teams establish a baseline. That provides a clear record of the impact. After all, if you can demonstrate what changed, the change disappears.
- Building recurring proof points, not one-time announcements. Instead of a single launch email, they create dashboards or periodic updates that keep the results visible over time. And they refer back to those baseline KPIs to reinforce the impact of the initiative.
- Tying their work to the numbers leadership cares about. If the CEO tracks pipeline velocity or customer acquisition cost, sales ops needs to show how their efforts affect those numbers. Pay close attention to organizational goals, and make sure your work supports the overall efforts.
Positioning your team strategically
We have several resources that can help you make sure your work doesn’t disappear. Check out the following webinars:
- Boosting the Sales Ops Team’s Influence
- Earning Sales Ops a Seat at the Table
- From Tactical to Strategic Sales Ops
Getting credit for your work is more than just a way to gain visibility—it’s a strategic positioning choice. Teams that let their wins turn into background noise are choosing to remain tactical. Teams that develop the habit of measuring and communicating impact are building the case for a fundamentally different—and more important—role.
Boosting the Sales Ops Team's Influence
How can Sales Ops implement their plans and improve results when they lack the direct authority to ensure that those plans are executed? In this session, learn to leverage the principles of influence and persuasion.
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.
From Tactical to Strategic Sales Ops
Some teams are so mired in tactical grunt work and daily firefights that they never make progress on strategic pursuits. How have other Sales Ops teams transitioned into more strategic functions? What steps did they take?
