What is Sales Operations? Guide to Strategy & Team Structure

Some companies might think they have a robust sales operations team.

When in reality, the department is just a receptacle for all the work their sales leaders can’t find time to do.

Sales analytics, software evaluation, process improvement… pass it to sales ops!

This is a recipe for chaos that hinders and overloads sales efficiency.

It’s essential to define the role and structure of your sales ops team before implementation.

In this blog, we’ll help you understand sales ops so you can develop a sales operations strategy that aligns with your organisation’s needs.

What is sales operations?

Sales operations use systems and technology to support sales teams in meeting their goals. They rely on data to make decisions, like how many reps to hire and where to place them. Their main objectives are efficiency, excellence, and continuous sales process optimisation.

The B2B sales ops team focuses on making a company’s sales approach strategic, data-driven, and deliberate rather than reactive or haphazard.

You can think of the Head of Sales Ops as the strategic advisor to the VP of Sales.

They’re thinking long-term, often longer than 18 months out, while a VP of Sales might focus more on the shorter-term objectives.

In terms of responsibilities, you can boil sales ops down to three overarching focuses:

• Creating a sales strategy and identifying objectives.
• Supporting sales representatives in reaching those objectives.
• Handling sales analytics to improve efficiency and keep leadership updated.

In the next section, we’ll go deeper into the benefits of sales ops.

Why is sales operations important?

Implementing a sales operations process streamlines your sales activities for efficient revenue generation. In turn, you ensure that everything sales does is in service of your organisational goals.

You also give your VPs and Managers more time to focus on deal-closing and management tasks rather than running win/loss analyses or filtering lead lists for new reps.

Here are some of the other benefits of establishing a dynamic sales ops team structure:

• Streamline sales processes to make them more efficient and scalable.
• Boost sales pipeline performance.
• Create alignment with business goals across departments.
• Implement data-driven strategies to enhance your sales team’s effectiveness.
• Introduce new tech and best practices.

The downstream effects of a sales operations department are shorter sales cycles, better win rates, and, ultimately, more revenue for your business.

What does sales operations do?

Sales operations is a critical function within an organisation. It supports the sales team in driving revenue and achieving business objectives.

The primary goal of sales ops is to streamline and optimise the sales process, ultimately increasing efficiency and effectiveness.

How do they achieve this?

Let’s review some of the key responsibilities of the sales operations team, which are divided into three focus areas: strategy and operations, analytics, and performance.

Sales strategy and operations

Sales operations professionals work closely with senior leadership to develop strategic plans aligning with the company’s goals.

This includes identifying target markets, setting sales targets, and developing sales strategies to achieve those targets.

Here are the key strategy and operations tasks of the standard SO team:

Define and enhance the sales process

They determine the sales process stages and standardise them in the CRM.

Determine longer-term sales objectives

Figure out which territories to pursue, which solutions to focus on selling and other longer-term objectives.

Find and implement sales best practices and tools

Sales ops are always looking for sales and industry best practices they can adopt and integrate into the sales process.

Keep leadership updated on sales

They run reports that help executives stay informed about all things sales.

Manage cross-departmental collaboration

Other sales operations responsibilities include supporting the sales team by helping streamline processes, providing training and resources, and ensuring that SDRs have the tools they need to succeed.

Team leaders ensure sales align with marketing, product, and company goals.

Sales analytics and data

Sales operations are responsible for collecting and analysing data related to sales performance, customer behaviour, and market trends.

This data helps identify areas for improvement and for sales managers to make informed decisions.

Handle sales forecasting

They use historical and market data to predict how sales will fare in the short- and long-term.

Conduct win/loss analyses

Sometimes, they’ll lead the study of deals to determine what activities commonly lead to sales success.

Determine and track sales KPIs

Sales ops identify which KPIs to track; these metrics help them assess and iterate on their initiatives effectively.

Set up sales dashboards

They work with sales managers to create dashboards for reps to track their key metrics and progress towards goals.

This is a lot to handle on their own, so SO teams often work closely with IT, especially regarding data hygiene and cleansing.

Sales performance

Sales operations also play a crucial role in measuring the sales team’s performance.

They track key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate sales strategies’ effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. This data-driven approach allows them to make informed decisions about resource allocation and strategy adjustments.

Additionally, they’re responsible for forecasting revenue and setting realistic targets for the sales team. By analysing historical sales data and market trends, they can provide accurate forecasts that help the company plan for future growth.

Find and evaluate sales technology

A sales operations specialist is often responsible for evaluating and implementing B2B technology, including CRMs, sales software, prospecting tools, digital sales rooms, and analytics platforms.

Plan and handle sales training

The SO team might create and implement a training plan depending on the organisation.

Facilitate sales communication

Sales operations keep SDRs informed through regular reporting, sharing victories, and updating the team.

Identify sales tasks to automate

Sales operations managers are experts on the tech needed to streamline prospecting and automate sales.

Remember that some of these performance tasks might fall into the hands of a sales enablement department, though some companies bring enablement into ops.

Overall, sales operations are crucial organisational functions that help drive revenue, improve efficiency, and support the sales team in achieving their goals.

By focusing on strategy, support, analytics, technology management, and performance measurement, sales ops professionals play a crucial role in ensuring the sales team’s success.

What are the different sales operations roles?

Below is a breakdown of the significant sales operations roles in descending order of experience:

VP of Sales Operations

AKA the director of sales operations. They’re the strategic advisors to your Head of Sales and team leader.

They’ll define the sales ops strategy, coordinate with other departments, and present to leadership.

Sales Operations Manager

Often second-in-command, the manager oversees a team of operations analysts or specialists who help them improve the sales process, find new technology, run analysis projects, and perform other high-level tasks.

Sales Operations Analyst

The analyst is proficient in sales tools, Excel, data modelling, and other analysis techniques.

They focus on using data to answer questions that will help the sales team improve their strategy and process.

Sales Operations Representative

An entry-level employee, the rep typically works closely with sales representatives, supporting them in various ways, from helping them create a sales dashboard to providing training on sales tools.

As your sales team grows, you’ll discover new operational needs. As a result, your sales ops team will increase, and each member will become more specialised.

At some point, many companies split a few of these roles into two. For example, a Senior Analyst may manage one or more Analysts.

Businesses may also hire operations specialists focusing on one core goal (e.g., improving sales velocity or training the sales team).

What are the essential sales operations tools?

Several tools can make sales operations duties easier. The main tools every SO team needs are a data provider, CRM, sales forecasting tool and territory planning tools.

Let’s look at them in more detail:

1. Compliant data provider

For sales ops teams, data isn’t just numbers; it’s the engine that drives process efficiency, territory planning, and revenue alignment.

Without a reliable data provider, CRMs quickly decay, reps chase the wrong leads, and forecasting becomes guesswork.

That’s why having a trusted B2B data partner is essential: to keep pipelines accurate, reps productive, and the entire revenue engine running smoothly.

Cognism is a must-have tool for ops teams in sales. Here’s why:

• Always-on data accuracy: Cognism’s enrichment tools keep your CRM clean and updated, reducing data decay and giving your teams confidence in every record.
• Real-time enrichment and integrations: Sync verified contact, firmographic, and technographic data directly into Salesforce, HubSpot, Snowflake, or Databricks via APIs.
• Smarter lead management: Improve scoring and routing with enriched data and AI-driven insights, reducing disputes and inefficiencies between reps.
• Territory planning made easy: Full visibility of rep coverage and activity helps ops leaders optimise territories as the business scales.
• Compliance-first approach: Cognism data is GDPR and CCPA-compliant, having been checked against 13 global Do-Not-Call lists, ensuring your org is safeguarded from compliance risks.
• Diamond Data® advantage: Access exclusive, high-quality mobile numbers and emails that connect reps with decision-makers faster.
• Revenue-wide enablement: Supports RevOps by aligning sales, marketing, and customer success with the same trusted data foundation.

Take an interactive tour below 👇

2. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software

A CRM system is essential for SO teams to effectively manage customer interactions, track leads, and streamline sales.

This sales operations tool helps to:

• Organise customer data.
• Track communication history with clients.
• Manage tasks and appointments.
• Analyse sales performance.

3. Sales forecasting tool

Sales forecasting tools help predict future sales trends based on historical data and current market conditions.

This allows operations teams to make informed decisions about resource allocation and plan budgets.

4. Territory planning tools

These tools help teams to effectively manage and optimise their sales territories.

They allow teams to:

• Segment customers.
• Assign reps to specific regions.
• Track performance in each territory.

How do you build a profitable sales operations team?

Building a profitable sales ops team isn’t just about hiring smart people; it’s about setting up the right foundation, tools, and processes to maximise revenue impact.

Here are the key steps:

Define clear objectives

Start by aligning sales ops with company revenue goals. Is the priority pipeline efficiency, territory expansion, or rep productivity?

Clear objectives shape the team’s strategy.

Hire the right mix of talent

A strong sales ops team blends analytical thinkers, process optimisers, and tech-savvy specialists.

Look for people who can turn data into decisions and technology into productivity gains.

Standardise processes

Profitability comes from repeatability.

Document lead routing, forecasting, territory planning, and reporting processes so reps and managers operate within a consistent framework.

Invest in data quality

Poor data drains productivity and creates friction across revenue teams.

Partner with a trusted B2B data provider like Cognism to ensure your CRM stays clean, compliant, and enriched with accurate contacts.

Leverage technology and automation

Integrate CRM, marketing automation, and data enrichment tools to streamline workflows.

Sales ops should be the architects of a sales tech stack that empowers reps, not burdens them.

Focus on enablement and training

A profitable sales ops team doesn’t just manage systems; they make the sales team better.

Provide training on tools, dashboards, and processes so reps can spend more time selling.

Measure and optimise

Build a culture of continuous improvement.

Track metrics like lead-to-opportunity conversion rates, rep productivity, and sales cycle length, and adjust processes to improve efficiency.

What are some best practices and challenges?

Whether you’re creating a new team or improving your existing operations department, you’ll find the below sales operations best practices and challenges valuable 👇

Best practices

Make data-driven decisions

When tweaking the sales process or refining the overall strategy, ensure you use data to inform these decisions. Though “gut feel” certainly has its place, statistics should support it.

Data-driven decision-making is crucial in sales operations. It allows companies to identify trends, track performance, and make informed decisions that drive growth.

By analysing sales operations metrics such as conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and revenue forecasts, businesses can gain valuable insights into their operations and determine the most effective strategies for achieving their goals.

Embrace automation

Embracing automation in sales operations can significantly benefit your team by increasing efficiency, accuracy, and productivity.

Automating repetitive tasks, such as data entry or scheduling follow-up emails, can free up valuable time better spent on strategic initiatives and building client relationships.

There are numerous tools available that can help streamline your sales operations processes.

CRM systems like Salesforce or HubSpot can automate tasks like lead scoring and email tracking, while tools like Tableau can help visualise data and identify trends.

Incorporating automation into your sales operations can enhance efficiency, minimise errors, and ultimately yield better results.

Shadow sales reps

Shadowing SDRs is valuable for improving sales operations. By spending time with reps in the field, you can gain insight into the day-to-day challenges and opportunities faced by the sales team. This allows your SOs to provide more effective support and guidance.

One of the critical benefits of shadowing reps is the ability to identify training needs and areas for improvement.

By observing reps in action, SO teams can pinpoint areas where additional training or resources are needed, helping to improve overall performance and productivity.

Challenges

Data quality

Accurate and reliable data is essential for making informed decisions. Poor data quality can lead to incorrect insights and ultimately impact the success of operations.

Integration issues

A sales operations coordinator may face challenges in integrating different tools and systems, leading to data management and communication inefficiencies.

Resistance to change

Team members who are comfortable with the status quo may resist new processes or technologies implemented by the operations team.

Overcoming this resistance and ensuring buy-in from all team members is crucial for the success of any sales operations initiative.

Lack of alignment between teams

Sales and operations teams may not always be aligned regarding goals, strategies, or communication. This lack of alignment can lead to inefficiencies and missed opportunities.

Avoiding distractions

There’s so much a sales operations team can do!

Prioritising and sticking to the most important projects is often challenging, especially when a B2B sales team constantly asks for little favours.

Dealing with company growth

As companies grow, they change, and so must the predictive analytics frameworks and technology.

This can be frustrating for sales ops teams; they always have to learn and adapt.

Standardising sales processes

Automated workflows in the CRM can help salespeople stick to the process, but we all know some reps want to do things their way.

This can mess with sales process analytics and hurt sales efficiency.

To address these challenges, sales operations must prioritise data quality by:

• Regularly auditing and cleaning data.
• Investing in tools and technologies that streamline integration processes.
• Communicating effectively with team members to gain buy-in for new initiatives.
• Fostering collaboration between teams to ensure alignment on goals and strategies.

How do you measure the success of sales operations?

How do you tell if your sales operations strategies are paying off?

You’ll have to monitor performance, mainly tracking the key metrics influenced by your OS team and metrics related to their core functions.

Here are the sales operations goals and KPIs to track:

Average win rate

This is one of the best KPIs for sales operations.

An increase in this performance metric is generally a sign that the sales operations skills, ideas and changes are paying off.

Average sales cycle length

Sales operations spend a lot of time trying to impact sales efficiency; average sales cycle length indicates whether or not their methods are working.

Lead response time

Getting a lead’s attention is crucial to sales. Ops teams focus heavily on supporting reps with B2B data, workflows, and technology to engage their leads.

Lead response time indicates how well it’s all working.

Tech usage rates

This is an essential sales operations KPI. SO teams must know if SDRs are using the technology they implement and how they use it.

This helps them spot failures in optimising the platforms and provides clues into how well they performed.

If tech usage rates are low, the SO team should respond by training reps on it.

Forecasting accuracy

Sales forecasting and predictive analytics (identifying potential problems) are significant aspects of sales operations. They need feedback on the actual vs the predicted to refine their predictive methods.

With this info, they can iterate on their strategies to make them more effective next time.

FAQs

What is the difference between revenue operations and sales operations?

While revenue and sales operations teams are interested in boosting the efficiency of revenue-generating teams and activities, sales operations are more specialised and focused primarily, if not only, on supporting the sales team.

Revenue operations take a more holistic approach, aligning and assisting sales, marketing, and customer success to increase revenue growth and enhance the customer experience.

In other words, breaking down silos between revenue-generating teams is the ultimate goal of RevOps. And empowering the sales team is the ultimate goal of sales ops.

What is the difference between sales enablement and sales operations?

Both functions work together closely to ensure the success and effectiveness of the sales team.

Sales enablement provides sales teams with the resources they need to sell effectively, such as product guides and marketing videos.

On the other hand, sales operations concentrate on optimising the sales process, leveraging technology, and driving efficiency within the sales organisation.

While a sales enablement rep might send over an industry report the rep can use to engage a new lead, an SO might set up an automation for them in their CRM.

What is the best sales ops tool?

Cognism is the number one tool for supercharging sales operations.

From keeping your CRM clean with real-time enrichment to streamlining lead routing and territory planning, Cognism gives ops teams the accurate, compliant data they need to keep revenue engines running smoothly.

With Diamond Data® - our exclusive database of verified mobile numbers - you’ll cut wasted time and connect reps with decision-makers faster.

Why not try before you buy? Click 👇 to get your free data sample.