The Secrets of Sales Operations Heroes

Slide 1: Secrets of Sales Ops Heroes Gerhard Gschwandtner, Selling Power David Huang, Parature Cathy Otocka, Salary.com Carol Sullivan, LucidEra

Slide 2: Today’s Agenda  Introduction • Gerhard Gschwandtner, Selling Power  David Huang • Director, Sales Operations  Cathy Otocka • Director, Sales Operations and On-Demand App Delivery  Carol Sullivan • Director, Sales and Marketing Operations  Panel Discussion Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 3: Polling Question  In my company, the role of Sales Operations reports into: a) VP of Sales b) CFO / Finance c) VP of Marketing d) CEO e) We don’t have dedicated Sales Operations f) Other Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 5: David Huang, Director of Sales Operations On-demand customer service  Sales Operations at Parature • Implement process • On-boarding • Territories • Performance Reporting • Contract Approval • Manage Sales Engineering Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 6: A Day in the Life… Sales Finance Marketing CEO  Contract issues  Once approved,  Market analysis,  Data analysis  Activity contracts go to ensuring leads are and customer- reporting finance for followed up on base analysis  Ensuring leads invoicing and  Ensuring reps are  Getting any & ops being revenue rec participating in number needed followed up on  Any client invoice campaigns to report to or renewal Board/investors discrepancies Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 7: The Importance of Sales Analytics Parature is a metrics-driven company…  VP of Sales • Looking at the numbers from all angles: – Sales cycle, ASP, demos, breakdowns of where sales come from  VP of Marketing • Historically the most analytical: – Lead source, demos, opportunities, resulting in what wins – marketing & Excel  Salesforce used for Lead and Opportunity tracking • Lots of transactional dashboards and reports Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 8: Why LucidEra?  Before LucidEra we reported everything out of Salesforce and Excel • Basically created “a mini-data warehouse” • The ability to take configurable pipeline snapshots was key  Results • We no longer have to worry about data warehousing • We can grab data on specific dates whenever we want now • It’s much easier to create calculated reports (e.g., averages, sums, subtotals for groups, etc.) Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 9: The Bottom Line  At Parature all decisions are made from numbers • We don’t shoot from the hip!  Secrets to Sales Ops success • Understand your company and what’s expected • Understand how sales numbers are intertwined and know what effects what • Ensure you have access to critical sales data at your fingertips Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 11: Cathy Otocka, Managing Director Sales Ops Connecting People, Pay & Performance  Sales Operations at Salary.com • Commissions and incentives • AE on-boarding • Pipeline Management • Territory Management • Maintenance /development of all SaaS apps • Data quality • Selling process from lead to contract • Develop and maintain key metrics for sales Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 12: A Day in the Life… Investigate & Align & Refine Get Answers Avoid Surprises Resolve  Territory disputes  Finance  We own all the  Finance / CFO  Discounting issues  Marketing company data so interaction comes  Contract issues  Sales we answer LOTS mostly at qtr/yr of questions…. end when we need  Commissions about data for earnings  Everything… everything! calls/ sec filings

Slide 13: Why LucidEra?  We had built a lot of Excel spreadsheets and tried to come up with answers • The amount of data got to be too large • Doing any meaningful trending was really time consuming… often not worth the effort…really hard to do “what if “ analysis  Results • LucidEra really opened our eyes to pipeline development • We now can very easily look at all key metrics over time • Goal: Recognize laggards in performance in areas other than strict quota achievement so we can address performance gaps before the AE is really in trouble: – Avg contract value by time period/by product/by rep (we look at this in a million different ways) – Rep statistics – deal size, deal count, product mix, deal age, close ratio. Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 14: Secret’s to Sales Ops Success  The role is different from company to company  Executive management support is critical  Make sure you have good data and solid processes • Without this the analytics really mean nothing  Having access to the right metrics/answers makes you look really smart • People are very grateful (and often still surprised ) when I can answer nearly any question that I am asked • The goal: With solid metrics you can anticipate business changes before they get the best of you! Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 16: Carol Sullivan, Director of Sales & Mktg Ops Traditional Sales Ops Challenges… You’re struggling with You can’t analyze trends Your weekends are spent low CRM adoption & or do comparisons on doing “stare and compare” poor data quality transactional data reporting in Excel Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 17: Flexible Reporting and Analysis is Key “ LucidEra has taken thecan take advantage analytics so that more complexity out of people and companies of analytical insights. ” - Denis Pombriant, Beagle Research Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 18: My Sales Operations Advice: Simplify!  Seek out best practices • The role is still unique to technology  Plan ahead, anticipate change • Analytics can keep you a step ahead  When it comes to managing metrics • You need flexibility – analytics are never static! • Make analytics a top priority – cultural change may be required! Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

Slide 19: Panel Discussion  Gerhard Gschwandtner  David Huang • Director, Sales Operations  Cathy Otocka • Director, Sales Operations and On-Demand App Delivery  Carol Sullivan • Director, Sales and Marketing Ops www.lucidera.com Copyright © 2008 LucidEra – All rights reserved

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