Sales Operations
The function supporting the sales organisation specifically — territories, quotas, forecasting cadence, CRM process and rep productivity.
What it owns
| Area | What it decides | What it does not |
|---|---|---|
| Territory | How accounts are allocated | Who is hired into them |
| Quota | How the number is derived | What the company target is |
| Forecast | The process and cadence | The committed number |
| Process | Stages, exit criteria, hygiene | Individual deal strategy |
| Tooling | Configuration and change control | Which tools get budget |
Source: Framing stated here
Why it is often more mature than revenue ops
Where it stalls
Given responsibility for forecast accuracy without authority over the stage definitions that produce it.
Measured on request throughput, which makes it efficient at ticket-taking and prevents structural work.
Territory redrawn annually without a disruption cost, destroying relationship capital already paid for.
Quota derived from prior attainment, which carries forward whatever imbalance the previous territory design had.
RELATED TERMS
Capacity Planning
Translating a revenue target into the number of productive selling resources required to hit it, accounting for ramp, attrition and expected attainment.
Territory Design
Dividing accounts among sellers so each has a patch with enough potential to support a quota, and so coverage is neither duplicated nor absent.
Marketing Operations
The function owning marketing systems, data and process — automation platform, campaign infrastructure, lead flow and reporting.
Revenue Operations (RevOps)
The function that owns the systems, data and process connecting marketing, sales and customer success, so that revenue is produced by a designed system rather than by four teams improvising in parallel.
COMMON QUESTIONS
- What does sales operations do?
- Territory and quota design, forecast process, pipeline hygiene, sales tooling and process, and the reporting leadership runs on.
- How is it different from revenue operations?
- Scope. Sales ops serves sales; revenue ops spans marketing, sales and success. The practical difference is authority at function boundaries, which is where most operational failure occurs.
- Does sales ops own the forecast?
- It owns the process, not the number. Sales leadership commits the number; sales ops makes the process by which it is produced consistent and measurable.
- Should you have both sales ops and revenue ops?
- Only if the boundary is written down. Two functions with overlapping remits and no stated decision rights produce contradictory configuration, which is the same failure as having neither.
FURTHER READING
Learn how to apply this: RevOps 101: Revenue Operations Foundations
Definitions are the vocabulary. The courses are where you learn to operate it, with the interactive audit tools.
See the course