We help growth companies generate leads and nurture them to a quicker close. Two departments are critical in this process – sales and marketing. The marketing team generates and nurtures leads and the sales team takes the qualified leads and closes the deal. Simple right? Not if you don’t have the right strategy in place to execute the small but critical details throughout the process. That’s where sales and marketing operations professionals come in.

These pros are essential and go by many names – sales operations, marketing operations, sales enablement and inside sales. They qualify and follow up on leads, and track and analyze data so sales and marketing can get better with every interaction. Their positions aren’t a huge hit to the bottom line and their compensation is often (and should be) tied to results to help recoup the costs.

Another benefit? Sales support roles aren’t distracted by the big deal they are working on or sidelined by conducting research for business development. Instead, they strictly focus on qualifying leads, setting meetings, analyzing data and inputting critical information into Salesforce or whatever customer relationship management platform (CRM) you use.

It does not matter how great your sales or marketing team is. If you don’t have sales support roles, you are not operating your program at 100 percent efficiency. Your team is chasing too many bad leads. Warm leads are cooling off before being nurtured and you are missing a huge opportunity to improve your pipeline.

If you are running smart lead generation programs, you’re already investing in PR and marketing. Hire a few sales operations roles today to make sure you get the most out of the investment.

Here’s a sales and marketing operations job description that outlines what skill set you should be looking for:

• Manage sales data through CRM
• Funnel lead generation activities, follow-up with leads, qualify leads and book appointments for external sales
• Manage marketing automation platform
• Use internal data and/or big data, along with market and competitor research, to help drive sales strategy
• Report sales and campaign results to sales and marketing
• Develop, organize and maintain sales collateral
• Define steps to improve conversions, shorten sales cycles and maximize wins
• Train the sales team on marketing campaigns

Adding a sales operations role doesn’t always mean a new hire. You may have someone who sits in sales or marketing today who is taking on some of these roles. Formalizing the position and responsibilities can be a great first step.

If you need help evaluating your sales teams’ efficiency and how it connects with marketing, get in touch with us.