Every engine requires a dependable supply of oil to ensure it runs smoothly and consistently. In business, that oil is the sales operations manager.
As your sales team starts to scale, it's crucial to have someone in place that can handle the big picture operational requirements, but hiring that expert isn't always easy.
Whether you're a job description expert or you're just starting out, this guide — with real examples, a template and salary information — will help you write a stellar sales operations manager job description.
Feel free to click the links below to jump ahead. Otherwise, read on.
What Does a Sales Operations Manager Do?
Sales operations managers make sure sales teams are running as efficiently and productively as possible. This is a mid-to-upper level role that often requires a bachelor's degree in sales or business or the equivalent in work experience as a sales operations representative or a sales operations analyst.
Much of their role revolves around optimizing the company's digital CRM — customer relationship management — system to ensure there is clear and effective communication between the sales team and clients. Their role also includes a healthy amount of data tracking and analysis to provide stakeholders with recommendations and insights to improve performance.
Sales operations managers interact with all levels of the sales team. For new sales team members, they help with training, onboarding and mentoring. With sales leaders and managers, they help make data-driven decisions and recommendations for improving the sales funnel and process.
Outside of the sales team, sales operations managers often work alongside the marketing team to build a lead qualification process, arrange email campaigns and share information to create marketing content, like eBooks, white pages, blogs and case studies.
Now that you have a baseline understanding of what a sales operations manager does and how they contribute to the sales team, let's dig a bit deeper to see what they do on the day-to-day and what is expected of them from an employer.
We pulled five real examples of sales operations manager job descriptions from our seven online communities. While these are real job descriptions, we have removed some information to protect the privacy of the companies that originally posted them.
As a Sales Operations Manager you will be part of our Operations Team and responsible for providing broad operational day-to-day support with ownership of our CRM, [redacted]. You will create reports for Account Executives and Sales Managers/Enterprise Sales.
Representatives as well as monthly reports for C-Level. Ensuring use of consistent Sales KPI definitions across company is your responsibility. Moreover, you will work with Finance, HR, and Sales to develop sales incentive programs and compensation planning in order to increase sales productivity.
Bachelor's degree required; technical or business-related field preferred.
Advanced Excel skills with a strong understanding of [redacted], other CRM applications and email marketing strategies.
[redacted] is searching for a Sales Operations Manager to help support our sales team as we manage incredible growth and new vertical expansion. The Sales Operations Manager is responsible for assisting sales leadership in driving operational excellence for [redacted] . They also assist with the day to day administration of [redacted] and operational tasks.
This role is a high value-add business partner to the sales organization, enabling revenue growth and increasing sales productivity by providing effective methodologies, efficient processes, value-added information and sales tools.
As Sales Operations Manager, you'll play a critical role in improving and scaling our sales operations to help [redacted] effectively and efficiently serve our quickly-growing customer base.
[redacted] is looking for a Sales Operations Manager to assist in improving the reliability of sales forecasts and sales effectiveness. Reporting to [redacted], this role will own the [redacted] sales forecast and will be responsible for building processes that will aid with improving its accuracy.
5 years of sales or sales operations experience. Bachelor's degree required.
As the Sales Operations Manager, you'll create scalable processes that ensure best practices in lead generation and database management. You'll also conduct data analyses that will be used to inform strategic decisions across the entire marketing team and other parts of the business.
As one of the most exciting [redacted], we're focused on finding the best talent and building the best team to continue accelerating our rapid growth.
While you can't copy and paste these job descriptions for your own purposes — yes even mundane job description plagiarism is frowned upon — you can utilize this handy sales operations manager job description template and adapt it for your own purposes.
We've gathered the most popular responsibilities and requirements found in sales operations manager job descriptions, and left a few fill-in-the-blank sections to customize to your company's requirements. Make sure to adapt it to reflect your company, culture and expectations so that candidates know exactly what to expect when they apply.
Boost sales productivity by refining customer segmentation, simplifying the sales process and identifying pain points at every stage of the sales funnel.
Track and analyze KPIs for growth, win/loss rates, upsells, renewals, quota attainment and identify individual performance areas for improvement.
Manage sales contracts, track customers and coordinate cross-functional activities across departments.
Present quarterly progress reports to stakeholders with actionable sales goals.
Partner with Sales and Marketing teams to define lead qualification process and analyze campaign performance.
Form strong relationships and maintain regular contact with Sales Managers, Sales Representatives and Sales Leaders.
Collaborate with Finance, HR, CSM and Sales to develop sales initiatives programs.
Onboard, train and mentor the new sales team members.
Develop sales-related resource documents, including training manuals, procedures and policies.
X years experience in sales or business role.
X years experience in sales operations.
Bachelor's degree in sales or business-related field OR the equivalent in work experience.
Strong understanding of high-level strategic direction and sales goals.
Proven excellence multi tasking, prioritizing projects and meeting deadlines and goals.
Confident with onboarding, training and mentoring the sales team at every stage of their careers.
Experience with [insert CRM system].
Proficiency with [insert other related digital analysis platforms].
The hard part is over. You've learned how a sales operations manager will contribute to your company, and you're a bit more prepared to write a cohesive job description that will attract top candidates.
But wait, there's more! The salary is an essential part of every job description, but knowing what a competitive salary is within your market and industry can be challenging. To help you determine an appropriate salary range for top candidates, we've included the average salary for sales operations managers in seven of the top hiring markets. Check out each bullet for more detailed information.