The Sales Operations Guide to Revenue Growth

Joining us for today’s show is Brad Reynolds, an executive who knows a thing or two about running a strategic sales operations function that supports aggressive revenue growth. Today’s topic is focused on how Sales Operations improves the efficiency of the sales team to increase revenue per head. During our discussion, Brad and I leverage our workbook, so flip to the Sales Operations phase on page 314 of the PDF to follow along.

As the Director of Sales Operations and Enablement at Kimberly-Clark Professional, Brad is going to demonstrate how to improve the efficiency of the sales team. Kimberly-Clark Professional is the B2B arm of Kimberly-Clark Corporation with global brands such as Kleenex, Scott, WypAll, and Kimtech.

Brad has been with Kimberly-Clark Professional the past eleven years, serving the past four years leading sales operations and enablement. Brad is uniquely qualified to speak on this topic of sales operations. The Kimberly-Clark Professional sales team targets segments around the world such as industrial, office buildings, health care, and education with hundreds of thousands of end-users that we deal with daily. Listen as Brad demonstrates how to improve the efficiency of the sales team.

Why this topic on this day? Sales ops has become a catch all phrase. The sales ops leader gets assigned all the work no one else wants to do. Often underfunded and understaffed, sales operations leaders fail to deliver a meaningful revenue contribution. Yet, the best growth executives understand that sales ops are the most strategic sales function in the entire company. They understand that when deployed correctly, sales ops can impact revenue growth in a very meaningful way. Do not starve this vital department. If you do you're going to miss your revenue goal.

In the first segment of the show Brad and I discuss the business outcomes his team is charged to deliver. We dive into the strategic focus areas of the sales operations team and Brad shares how he guides his team with a strategic focus to keep from becoming a reactive catch-all. To operate strategically, Brad works closely with other functional leaders in HR, product management, finance, IT, and marketing to interlock sales with the overall corporation.

Listen as Brad outlines the roles and the responsibilities of the sales operations team to demonstrate how to improve the efficiency of the sales team. As a strategic function, we discuss the executive reporting requirement to provide the right level of information on sales performance at the right time to make decisions.

To power the sales operations team, Brad describes the systems architecture required power the team. Brad describes in detail the forecasting approach and process to provide accurate forecasts.

We wrap up the show with Brad demonstrating a best practice approach to pipeline management. Listen as Brad describes the process and how pipeline management reports are released; “We have district managers meet with their teams, our directors of sales have the same meeting with their district managers, the VP of sales meets with the directors of sales and yesterday, our VP of sales had his pipeline report with our North American President. We start at that level and we ladder the metrics and the measurements all the way down so that we're all looking at the same things.”