Sales Operation Manager

Overview

The Economist is looking for a Sales Operations professional with demonstrable experience in creating a strategy to support sales teams and sales leadership in their day to day work, ensuring they have the tools, data and processes to enable them to be effective and achieve their sales goals. In this role, the Sales Operations Manager will provide the data insights, analysis, process improvements, coaching and leadership that optimises sales performance and drives outstanding customer service.

Objective / Purpose

The Economist Group (TEG) Sales Operation team works across sales teams and business units to help them run more efficiently and effectively. The Sales Operation team lead on understanding and minimising the administrative tasks that keep sales teams from focussing on revenue-driving activity and enable sales leaders to concentrate on coaching and supporting their teams. The sales operations team generates data-driven insights, forecasts strategy plans, and makes sure that all of the necessary systems and tools are in place to enable customer facing teams to maximise their performance.

Responsibilities

The Sales Operation Manager leads a team of sales operations staff and has the following responsibilities

Monitor the sales organisation's compliance with required standards for maintaining CRM data working closely with TEG sales leadership and Technology to ensure data integrity and quality is maintained
Monitor and support the accuracy and distribution of sales reports and other intelligence essential to the sales organisation. Recommend revisions to existing reports, or assist in the development of new reporting tools as needed
Drive the adoption and effective use of sales tools across all sales teams
Collaborate with the Marketing Operations team to support and optimise the lead management process and ensure data integrity across the marketing process is aligned with sales
Partner with TEG sales leaders and managers to help make data-driven decisions and recommendations for improving the sales funnel and process
Provide input to TEG senior leadership in the development and administration of sales incentive compensation programs
Proactively identify opportunities for sales process improvement. Working closely with TEG leadership to inspect sales process quality and prioritise opportunities for improvement. Identify process bottlenecks and inconsistencies and facilitate a culture of continuous process improvement
Define data governance process for sales data and undertake activity to maintain and promote compliance
Maintain data quality across sales and associated finance systems, maintain the data for customers (accounts)
Support territory management activity
Design and deliver the education and training of sales teams to ensure that everyone is able to use sales systems, tools and data effectively
Define and implement a communication strategy to all of the sales teams to deliver updates, training and drive engagement
Provide hands-on leadership for TEG Sales Operations team, setting goals and driving team performance
Provide development opportunities for TEG Sales Operations team to broaden and enhance their skill sets, working with the team to ensure they have Individual development plans to stretch and grow their skills

The ideal experience for this role is:

Experience of defining and implementing sales process improvement to drive agreed business outcomes
Deep understanding of Salesforce capability and usage, and experience of defining requirements for enhancements and working with teams to deliver upgrades that enable and support improvements in the sales process and ways of working
Experience working with multiple business units and commercial team stakeholders,
CRM data hygiene best practice definition and implementation of processes to maintain data quality and integrity
Sales operations best practice
Business experience in a sales operations role, ideally in a global sales organisation

The ideal skills for this role are:

Understanding of commercial team drivers, behaviours and requirements
Sales process improvement based on lean and CI principles
Salesforce / CRM management
CRM data hygiene
Data manipulation and analysis using tools such as spreadsheets, databases and Data Loader
Sales pipeline management, forecasting and reporting
Familiarity with creating and rolling out Salesforce dashboards and reports
Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive experience
Strong communication and collaboration skills
Proactive working style with the ability to adapt to change
Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills.

The ideal professional attributes for this role are:

A strong communicator with an ability to agree goals and set expectations
An ability to multi-task and to correctly prioritise tasks based on criticality
Detail oriented, able to work with large datasets, find the answers and make clear recommendations based on data insights
Customer focused, always considering the experience of both internal and external customers
An ability to manage diverse stakeholders and build credibility and integrity with senior leadership as a trusted advisor

Qualifications (preferred, not essential)

Salesforce Admin Certification (ADM 201)
APM Project Management Qualification (PMQ)

The Economist Group values diversity. We are committed to equal opportunities and creating an inclusive environment for all our employees. We welcome applicants regardless of ethnic origin, national origin, gender, gender identity, race, colour, religious beliefs, disability, sexual orientation , age or marital status.

The Economist

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Sales Operations Manager