r/SalesOperations

We are a small sales team, mostly inbound, a few referrals but nothing fancy

This week, i had three deals that looked good and then all three went quiet at the exact wrong time. One was waiting on a proposal one had asked for a revised price one said they were just checking with their team.

And now i am staring at a pipeline that looked great on monday but till friday it was worse.

I am starting to think i need better software, not better memory.

Something that helps me see when a deal is fading, keeps follow ups from turning into guesswork, maybe gives a little warning before a prospect disappears completely. I already have a full crm, i just want to know what people use when they are tired of losing deals that were almost there.

What has actually helped you catch this stuff early?

I work in a small B2B environment and I love it. But Im trying to figure out if the pain I deal with daily is normal or if our company is uniquely chaotic.

Here what my day looks like:

CRM is half enriched and full of outdated contact

CRM is full of random companies in my designated vertical (micro to enterprise)

No clear ICP, so prospecting feels like guessing

Adding a new account is a manual process and takes up to 24 hours to get approved

I am responsible to enrich my territory. So I spend my free time on google, co pilot or when I am driving around writing businesses I think would be a good fit.

Huge product portfolio with no real guidance on how to position them. ( I do have a subject matter expert) But its up to me to find the companies

No written processes for sales, ops, or admin. ( I have to go off of memory or wing it)

proposal building takes forever and requires second eyes to look for mistakes (grammar, wording, details, snip its of the customer logo look good)

Route mapping is manually and clunky

Admin communication sucks, they reach out to you about something but provided no actionable or clear next steps or insight. ( Your customer is about to be sent to collection please get ahold of them) ( your credit approval is missing the LLC that on the account name please resubmit once fixed)

Product material dense and hard to translate into customer value. Requiring you to learn product from veteran coworkers

Prioritization is impossible because everything feels equally important

Tools don't talk to each other well

Reporting/ forecasting is feels like guesswork since there no criteria other then what are you going to sell next month. BTW it has to be at least quota

Half my job is working around broken processes/ workflows

Its hard to gauged what good output is since there no written standard. For example I called 100 prospects, and did 40 drop ins this week. Manager thinks that okay, vets think that's solid and green peas ask me how I did it.

I want to be clear I am grateful for the role and love my job. I am in no means complaining. I am trying to figure out if this is a common pain sales org face. If so why don't they just fix it. Seems to me the smoother thing goes the more output a rep would have resulting in more revenue coming in.

Something I've been wondering about:

Does responding at the right moment actually make a noticeable difference in your sales process?

Not necessarily responding instantly, but making sure the next action happens when it's supposed to.

For example, if something gets delayed by a few hours or a day, does it usually affect the outcome?

I'd be interested to hear how Sales Ops teams think about timing and whether you actively measure it.

I've been looking at multiple options in relation to this, so I'm particularly interested in how other teams approach timing.

Hey so I’m an SE in fintech for many years now but always had a really decent workflow or teams to work with. The best org I ever worked for had an amazing process I’m trying to potentially replicate it here but tbh idk if it’ll work either.

Here’s the workflow from the “best” place I worked at:

How I see it every deal comes in should be a case in salesforce or a CRM tool.

Then that should go thru a vetting process with an SE manager and they assign it to an SE to do. Some deals shouldn’t come to an SE in this region or maybe it’s a biz we can’t get underwritten etc.. manager is constantly vetting with legal or product or whoever. I was never really on those calls.

From there the SE would work with an AE who’s managing the deal from the commercial side and SE manages it from the technical side.

Get on initial discovery and SE creates an initial BRD. That BRD lives in a shared drive.

Sandbox is provisioned, api docs are shared along with a shared thread to communicate with the client and AE is copied in.

Additionally there’s a slack channel made per deal you work on and in the channel all relevant ppl are in it for the deal.

Constant comms is how we did it. Comms to make sure we are driving the deal forward. Comms channel are also available for the SE team to ask each other help but also product and eng as well to answer any deeper “hey can we do this” or “hey this is an error they’re seeing anyone can help me” type situation.

Ofc in the pre sales you run into technical debugging and so we had tools to debug esp api related stuff. Or we had support look into it if it related to support.

While deal is moving along we should see more progress leading up to a final BRD and that final BRD gets sent to the client. Client sees it and agrees and gives the okay that they are good to go on the integration and integration into sandbox is working and a handoff process is past off to a post sales engineer to do certification. pre sales SE goes away and repeats his cycle and makes updates to salesforce case and assigns it to the Post Sales SE

Post sales SE will get on a call to do a final check making sure everything is kosher. (Typically tho it’s multiple calls but I’m simplifying it) they ask for the client live on call to perform a few test transactions and records the results live in a certification doc. Literally just copies and pastes the logs to prove it’s working.

After that they provision out production creds along with a final copy of the results so the clients dev teams can look back and see the full picture from final BRD to final Cert doc.

After that the post SE guy hands it off to the AE or CSM at that point and the cycle continues.

Here’s my current issue:

Got hired at a new org but they have nothing I just described^ they have some half baked version. No BRD no case management in fact there is no case management each deal is basically coming in rn on the AE side and they randomly copy me into threads with random subject lines. They also randomly throw me into calls with zero context.

They also have no BRD process but in lieu of a BRD they have a crude tier sheet. Meaning it’s a menu of options a client can “purchase” from and integrate. And the more they integrate the higher the tier they are and therefore the higher rev share they earn from the processing of the transactions. (If ur tier 1 then you will earn 5% or if ur tier 2 u might get 10% rev share as an example) the idea is to incentivize the client to integrate more of the API into their platforms making them “stickier”. I get the logic but in practice it doesnt actually happen. Bc most of the time they want us for this one process and thats it.

It’s my job to construct the three tiers and based on the initial call I had with them I will make a tier sheet and hand it off to the AE to discuss with the client but the AE does not include me back into the convo after that so on subsequent calls or emails I have no clue what they want to “purchase”. Or what tiers they went with. When asking the AE for context they make me ask their manager bc it needs approval for me to see it for some reason.

but the issue I’m running into isn’t just that there isn’t a clean process it’s also that I’m the only person rn. The other issue is everything is done via one shared inbox what I mean by that is they also have me doing integration support along with SE. Meaning I’m helping existing clients debug their issues like support would be doing and it’s all within the same inbox as my SE job. It gets messy fast. This is bc the current support team isn’t trained on the APIs. They only know about the modules we sell in-house and regularly address those support issues related to the platform. There’s also no help system for me to get answers back to clients on both the api support side and the SE work. I’m still new here but there’s no clean way for me to ask for help. Often times the knowledge is siloed and when asking eng or product they may know this or that but i spend most of my days piece mealing a solution to the problem.

There’s also no AI adoption not really. I was hoping to automate the process more with AI. And also I asked them to put in a ticketing system to handle all the actual support stuff so it leaves the inbox for purely SE concerns.

A ticketing system lets me link issues, escalate to the right teams or track SLAs but since it’s one giant inbox with only subject lines and no ties back to salesforce I’m guessing half the time who I’m speaking with.

Then there’s the certification piece. Every deal has to be certified. Just like how it was in the “best org I worked at” same thing here. This is bc we need to make sure each time the client transact it is passing the correct values to the interchange so it doesn’t hit any violations at the card network level. If it does then they lose money and so do we. But normally in order to certify we ask them to perform basic checks live on a call with us. Then we internally use tools or VPN into the servers to check the logs. Issue here is I have no tool or access to the logs. I actually have to take their api key and plug it into a postman collection and replicate their calls and see the logs from there.

Once it’s deemed certified I have to email a bunch of specific people internally to getting them the production account. That can take days bc the people I email internally are actually senior directors of eng and they’re jam packed in meetings all day.

I’m getting burnt out and it’s only been 12 weeks what can I do to help make this better? Thoughts? Yall can ask more clarifying questions

This is getting boring as half my week is chasing reps to update deals they closed weeks ago. Other half is explaining to leadership why the forecasts moved when a rep finally logged something.

The reps aren't lazy its the crm that punishes. It has required fields that does not match how we sells, so people type whatever unblocks the save and move on. Every enrichment tool we bolt on top makes reporting look shinier while the underlying data quality quietly gets worse.

A new field won't fix this and a fourth tool definitely won't. Also updating the CRM helps everyone except the person being asked to do it and until that changes I'm just the one who knows where the real numbers actually live.

Nagging clearly isn't scaling. How are you getting reps to maintain data without making it a separate fulltime job?

I'v been running the revops for a mid-market SaaS team now for a couple of months now we have about 14 reps across two segments. My sunday nights still means pulling the pipeline and cleaning up stages reps haven't touched. Then I always have to rebuild the slide leadership expects Monday morning every flippen week.

By the time we're in the meeting, half the conversation is an argument over commit vs best case. The CRM has it in one bucket, while the rep walks in calling it something else. I end up sitting between them trying to work out what changed.

I keep hearing about teams using AI for this, but most explanations stop at better forecasting. I want the boring details like:

- Where does the rundown show up for the team?
- What gets pulled and summarized before the meeting, and does everyone see the same version?
- If the person in ops is out, does the routine still run?

Most important, what do you still check before leadership sees it? The judgment call can stay with us. I want Monday spent talking about deals instead of Sunday spent assembling the deck.

I run a retail business in Mumbai and am considering structured training for our store teams: customer handling, empathy, product knowledge, consultative selling, complaint resolution and using CRM/POS systems properly.

Before hiring a trainer, I’d love to hear from retail employees, store managers or business owners who have actually undergone such training or planned such training:

What type of training did you receive?

Did it genuinely change staff behaviour or improve sales, conversion, customer feedback or repeat business?

Did the improvement last, or disappear after a few weeks?

What made the trainer effective or ineffective?

Was there any training that felt like a complete waste of time?

We are not looking for aggressive selling or unnecessary upselling. The objective is to help employees understand customers better, recommend responsibly and provide more compassionate service.

If you worked with a trainer or company you genuinely recommend, please DM me their name and contact details.

I’d particularly value first-hand experiences from trainees and managers rather than promotional responses from trainers themselves.

I just created this Reddit account because I wanted to talk to my fellow sales leaders who are selling to large enterprises with complex buying committees.

Have you ever felt like your reps are missing core committee members, be it procurement, IT, infosec, whoever, while still calling the deal at an advanced stage?

And the worst part is when you can see right through it. You know the deal isn't going to close, you know the projections are about to go down, but it's already too late to correct course.

Has this happened to other enterprise sales leaders? How are you catching this or solving it?

Putting this out there because I've been going back and forth on this in my head for a while and wanted to hear from people doing similar work.

**Quick background:** I started my career as an inbound sales representative at a previous company (an app development firm), then moved into my current company about a year ago, where I work in the sales department but my day to day is more operations and systems than traditional sales. Over the last roughly 3 years, here's what my work has actually looked like:

Managing contracts, drafting SOWs,NDAs,MSAs etc and keeping that language accurate and up to date.

Owning our CRM end to end, including data hygiene, dashboards, and forecasting reports.

Building and maintaining Power BI reports for sales pipeline and forecasting.

Lead management and CRM based process improvements.

More recently, my role has shifted to focus almost entirely on the CRM side: dashboards, CRM administration, weekly forecasting reports, and working closely with our CRM developers on automation and continuous improvement projects.

So I sit somewhere between sales support, CRM administration, business systems, and contracts, and I'm genuinely not sure what to call it or where it's supposed to go next. I've been thinking my title should be something like Sales Operations Senior Analyst, but I'm not confident that's right either ( right now its just sales support).

**A few things I'd love honest input on from people in similar roles:**

What does the career growth path actually look like from a role like this?

What skills would you say are worth polishing or picking up to actually get good at this and move up, not just get by?

Given what I've described, what would you call this role? Does Sales Operations Senior Analyst sound right, or is there a more accurate title for this kind of work?

Genuinely curious how people who've been through this figured out their next step.

**TL,DR:** \~3 years of experience, moved from inbound sales at a previous company into a sales/CRM operations role at my current company (contracts, SOWs/MSAs, Dynamics 365
CRM ownership, Power BI dashboards and forecasting, now leaning fully into CRM and automation). Unsure what the growth path looks like from here, what skills to focus on, and what the correct job title for this role actually is. Currently think it's Sales Operations Senior Analyst but open to correction.

As I've worked in the role of IT director overseeing global operations, I've come to observe how our various regional teams have very different processes for Sales Management. These differences in qualification criteria, approval processes, and reporting practices create challenges for enterprise-wide analytics.

Leadership wants standardized reports, whereas regional managers insist that their regions require specific sales processes for their respective markets. Attempts at standardization have been resisted at every turn because teams are worried about losing their ability to adapt to local customer needs.

At the same time, IT is struggling with the issue of making exceptions that will add to the complexity of maintenance. Has anyone solved the issue of standardizing Sales Management processes without forcing every region to conform to a single set of processes?

**Hi everyone, I just started doing door-to-door sales, and today was my first day. Almost every door I knocked on was a “no,” and a lot of people wouldn’t even give me the time of day. I try my best to look professional, have good posture, and approach people confidently. I know there isn’t necessarily one “correct” approach for everyone, but I’m not someone who gets discouraged easily. I do, however, need some advice because I genuinely want to get better at this. I work in Southern California scheduling solar consultations for homeowners. I work with a major company in the area, and one thing I’ve been telling people is that the consultation is completely free. But now I’m wondering if leading with “free” is actually hurting me because people might immediately assume it’s a sales pitch or a scam, I’m genuinely just trying to see if they’re willing to schedule an appointment to see if they’re qualified and boom, they’re in. I’ve also wondered whether my appearance affects how people perceive me. I’m a short Black guy with neck tattoos, and I know I can look like I’m from the hood at first glance. I’m not ashamed of how I look, but I realize that homeowners may make assumptions about me before I even get a chance to talk to them. Once I actually get into a conversation, I’m comfortable. I can hold a conversation, start one, and get straight to the point. My biggest problem right now is getting people to actually stop and listen. For anyone who has experience with door-to-door sales, solar, or appointment setting:**

**● What helped you get better at your approach?**
**● What made people more willing to talk to you?**
**● Should I stop emphasizing that the installation and consultation is “free”?**
**● Are there any legitimate ways to generate leads or run ads outside of knocking doors?**
**● How long did it take you before you started getting consistent results?**

**I’m not looking for sympathy. I want to improve, so any honest advice especially from people who have actually done D2D sales would be appreciated.**

Want to know how sales ops teams handle this when most of the selling happens face to face. The CRM can tell you the appointment happened. It can tell you whether the deal closed and show close rate by rep. But there is still a pretty big gap between those numbers and what happened during the actual conversation. Did the rep ask the right discovery questions? Did they handle the objection well? Did they explain the offer the right way? Did they actually ask for the sale? You can see that one rep closes at 35% and another at 20% but figuring out why usually means a manager has to be there in person. Teams that are doing home visits or property tours that seems hard to scale. Ride alongs only cover a small sample and managers can spend hours driving around just to observe a few conversations at best. I have been appointed as the individual to come up with a solution to this situation and I am looking into some AI tools that record and analyze in person sales conversations as a possible way to fill that gap. Seems promising but rep adoption is the part I want to know more about.

Curious to hear from people working in sales operations.

Every team seems to have one process that looks simple on paper but becomes time-consuming in practice.

Maybe it's keeping information organized, coordinating different steps, or making sure things happen at the right time.

What's one part of your sales process you'd most like to simplify or automate?

What have you tried so far, and did it actually make things easier?

20M I accepted an offer for an entry level D2D sales job. It’s a company that specializes in roofing. I don’t have any sales experience

Salary:
Base Salary: $1400 Bl-weekly + Monthly Phone allowance: $100
$36,400 (Base) + $1,200 (Allowances) = $37,600 Annual before commission

Pay Period Example: (Demo bonus begins on the 4th demo)
3.5 sets/ day
21 sets / week
42 sets / pay period
20% conversion = 42 sets / 8 demos

# of Sets. Demos

.
Below 30. $100
30-39. $200
40-49. $250
50-59. $300
60-69. $350

8 Demos - 3 Demo Quota = 5 Bonus Demos x $250 (40 Tier) = $1,250 bonus
Base ($1,400) + Commission ($1,250) = $2,650

Quarterly Set Bonus:
250+ sets = $5 each (paid on ALL sets) - $1,250 / Qtr = $5000 / Year

Monthly Roofing Bonus:
55 roof sets - $500
75 roof sets - $750

Benefits:
90 days - Medical, Dental, Vision, 401K 3% Match, 3 days PTO days
Training:
$500 per week (15 sets in a week need to get out of)

rep adoption is probably the part i'd weigh most here. sequences, calling, prospecting and reporting all look relevant on paper, but i'm more interested in which ones become part of the normal sales routine once a team settles into the crm.

if you were evaluating it around day to day rep usage, which part of the sales workflow would you pay the most attention to?

Looking for references/reviews on the following tools:

Salesforce Rev Cloud (CPQ) (RM?)
Conga Advantage CPQ
DealHub
Experlogix
Expedite commerce genesis
Nue
Servicepath

I was assigned with a task of finding a sales enablement platform and I need help as I am struggling.

We are a did size b2b saas, 20 sales reps, 5 AEs, marketing and CS. For now we are keeping content lives in random folders, training is half lms, half Loom links and reps are constantly slacking enablement asking where the latest deck is. My vp wants one platform that pulls content, training and deal rooms together and sits on top of our crm so reps do not have to jump around all day. Finding this all in one tool is giving me a hard time on deciding what works best before we spend on it. What pushed us on looking for this is because last quarter we launched a new pricing model and thought we were covered. We had docs, slides, talk tracks. In reality, half the reps were still using old pricing pdfs sitting in their personal folders and one big deal almost got torpedoed because the customer received two different price structures in the same week.

That was the moment my vp said we need a real enablement platform, not another shared drive. Now i am here trying to figure out how to judge these tools before we drop serious budget on them.

What did you wish you had checked before you signed for one?

Recently i saw that once deals get bigger the crm doesn't always show the full picture

A deal might look like it’s in late stage but in reality it’s stuck in security, legal procurement or waiting on internal approvals. The real updates right now are scattered across notion, spreadsheets, emails and slack messages, which makes it hard to see what’s actually moving. I'm interested to know any tools that you are using to track real progress and keep stakeholders connected outside the crm to help team stay on top of next steps without creating another hard admin process.