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[Music] [Applause] welcome to the SBI podcast offering CEOs sales and marketing leaders ideas to make the [Music] number welcome SBI podcast listeners and video podcast viewers my name is Greg Alexander and I'm the CEO of SBI a sales and marketing consulting firm dedicated to helping you make your number this is the weekly SBI podcast and it's purposed to help you make your number by getting your peers to share with you how they make theirs today's guest is Steve rutage who is a senior vice president of global sales operations and enablement at the enterprise software company Genesis who is the leader in the customer service business and contact center management software space they have a little over 3,000 customers in 80 countries Steve welcome to the show thanks Craig happy to be here okay today we are going to ask Steve to help his peers set their companies up for success by discussing how to develop and execute a sales operations strategy so how are we going to do this we're going to use a section of sbi's Revenue growth method to guide our conversation specifically step five sales strategy phase 13 sales Ops which you can find on page 187 to 188 if you want to follow along at home and you still don't have a copy of this method you can get it at salesbenchmarkindex.com sl26 hyphen report all right we're going to jump into it here and Steve I'm going to warm you up a little bit by asking some high level questions and then in segment two and segment three we'll get a little bit more specific um so starting out so for the audience can you share what are the objectives of your sales Ops Team um I I think at this to maybe stay high level I'll give you the uh elevator pitch on probably the two objectives of our team um number one is we need to let the company and namely that's the head of sales the CEO the CFO know what the Outlook is for the business and that might mean for the current quarter it might mean for the next 12 months so first and foremost we have to give the number and the confidence behind behind how we're looking shortterm medium-term and long-term in terms of the number that's number one and number two is for our sales teams and Global sales organization we need to give them the guidance and the tools that enable them to sell to do it well win a majority of the time to do it and to do it with as much ease as possible those are probably our two high level objectives that I'll start out with okay perfect the reason why I asked that question is in order to develop a sales Ops strategy having objectives clearly understood upfront by the sales Ops team is a very important thing so Steve just shared a couple couple with us and I think those are probably pretty consistent with other sales offs leaders so let me let me go to the next question which is regarding internal processes that sales offs is responsible for for example order management pricing comp Administration Etc and the reason I asked this question Steve just to give you some some con uh context here is sometimes we see sales Ops kind of being a catchall organization you know they do everything the organization needs to do that nobody else has time to do or wants to do and that leads to a less productive sales offs group so what are the internal processes that you own um well I guess I will say that what you're alluding to with sort of the catchall um I can't say that we're free of that but maybe we can talk about that a little bit later in terms of the processes that we clearly own um we own um doing the sales forecast and I know in some organizations that's owned by Finance but really I'm kind of the right-hand person to our Global head of sales for that process that includes what's being done in the sales regions and what rolls up to us every week um we own the Deal review process and approving um approving discounts and approving non-standard deals We Own Wind loss analysis we own doing rfps sales training um we have an executive briefing Center um that we own we have our reference database we have social selling we have our quote tool quote to Cache um defining our sales process um so that's a that's a list of the very formal things that we own I can't say it's all but um those are those are some of the key processes that we're responsible for so that's a lot so uh you're very busy uh you mentioned some things there like the executive briefing Center that uh we typically don't see um in the responsibility of of sales offs but that's good context it's good for the audience to understand the breath and the depth of the things that you do um you mentioned forecasting a few times and the key role that you and your team play in calling the number what other key executive decisions do you help the executive team make I think um one of the um the things that has probably been most useful to our executive team is the output of our win loss analysis Greg um we implemented this about seven quars ago one could argue we could have done it sooner but um we're all on an evolution path here and we we made this systematic we started capturing key data within Salesforce um we we created a system around customer and partner interviews for both wins and losses and it's that data about um where we're winning and why and how can we perpetually U that behavior and where we're losing and why um and what do we do about that are we chasing the wrong segment or do we have a non-competitive product and so the output of that whether good or bad whether to continue or change our behavior and those recommendations for the the broader company because often those things are those reasons are outside of sales um that has probably been our one of our key areas of of of influence and information going to the executive team um certainly the the forecast in the number but I wouldn't say that that's necessarily these immediate executive decisions those are more updates and that I I would also say where we see growth potential where we see increasing pipeline where we see in a certain country or go all of a sudden hey um our reps are doing really well there's lots of Pipeline and there's growth there and maybe lack of growth elsewhere probably that guidance on where we ought to be investing maybe a little more and a little less but um I would say in those order in that order um probably with win loss being our major input to the executive team right now yeah I'm really glad to hear that you're doing that and I'm glad that it's a formal process um you've been doing it for seven quarters now and you're right I mean that information could affect the product road map it could affect the pricing strategy it could affect the campaign process and marketing certainly can affect the things that the sales team does but that information can be um should be placed in the center of the table for all of the uh quarterly board meetings and monthly operating reviews Etc so you're right absolutely right yeah that's great that you're doing that all right let me ask you my last question in in this segment and then we'll take a quick break here so I was looking at your LinkedIn profile and ing to that looks like you've been in the role now for about five years so in your view what are the major obstacles sales offs leaders need to overcome to be successful um yes and just for for those listening by the way before this role I had roles in product marketing and product management this is so this is although 5 years is not where I spent my career but I think leveraging that experience and wanting to be close to the sales team has made this an excellent job and so if you're listening and you're in this role I happen to think it's a important and growing role in companies and I found a I found it to be a a very exciting stage in my career anyway back to your question um what are the obstacles um you know Greg it really is and you kind of alluded to it it's the it's the distractions it's the all kinds of one-off requests or sort of never-ending tweaks or recommendations about what we could do and a lot of them all by themselves can make pretty good sense like okay but I would say that we can do anything but we can't do everything and that's that gets us into a challenge when you have you know a senior manager or a sales leader or influential rep who has a request and it's just really hard to get to everything it it it really bogs can bog us down yeah and I would also say you know and I may not have the perfect words but everybody has an opinion and I have 100 people and I can get 100 opinions at least or I can make a joke that I can get 101 opinions but I will you know everybody has an opinion and you can't live that way you've got to say you know I I have a strategy it's informed it's reviewed with the right people I've got to focus on these things and I've got to move forward yeah if you don't do that you'll never really get anywhere you'll be busy you can be busy all day with you know distractions and email but you've got to say what am I is informed what do I feel confident about and you've got to drive that but we constantly have the distractions and that that's been been our biggest obstacle so far Greg yeah so I agree and I'm glad that you you answered that way and the reason to be honest with you the reason why I have you on the call today the show today is because you know we deal with a lot of organizations that are underinvested in sales Ops I mean if I just explain your background to people and you add it to it with product management product marketing but even just look at your academic credentials I mean Stanford and MIT so for those sales leaders that are listening ask yourself the question I mean do I really have a strategic thought partner in the role of sales offs and if I don't put one in there ASAP and then when you put the person in there make sure they can be successful by having a sales off strategy that says we're going to do these things and we're not going to do those things and to Steve's Point sounds good in practicality maybe sometimes that doesn't happen but having a Direction versus no Direction can and cause the distractions to be fewer there's always going to be some but it can reduce the number of distractions okay we're going to take a short break and when we come back Steve and I are going to discuss analytics data and Technology three big things in any sales offs strategy so stick around after the [Music] break you are watching SBI TV this is a monthly web TV show featuring guests just like you Executives trying to grow their revenues each month you can Peak behind the scenes and watch your peers discuss their strategies for how they make their numbers you are not going to want to miss [Music] this welcome back my name is Greg Alexander and I'm the CEO of SBI and my guest today is Steve rutage who is the senior Vice President of Sales offs and enablement at the enterprise software leader Genesis today we are discussing the development and execution of sales Ops strategy and we're using sbi's Revenue growth methodology to do it if you want to follow along that's Pages 187 to 188 okay before the break Steve shared with us how he established the objectives of the sales Ops Team he explained to us which internal processes his team owns and it was a long list he informed us how he helps Executives make key strategic decisions particularly around using win loss data and lastly he outlined what he feels to be the biggest obstacles to sales offs success based on him being in the role in The Last 5 Years and these obstacles can be categorized as the never-ending distractions okay during this segment we're going to hear from Steve about his approach to analytics how he is leveraging data to derive insights into the business and how he uses technology to increase the productivity of the Salesforce so Steve let me pull you back into the conversation here as it relates to the topic of analytics we see this Continuum that has been popularized recently with the emergence of big data in Predictive Analytics applied to sales and that Continuum is we start with descriptive which describes what has happened in the past we progress to diagnostic which answers the question why did that happen and then we move to predictive which says if all things remain stable in the future this is likely what's going to happen in the future and our client base and our audience is somewhere along that Continuum all three being very hard to pull off but worth the effort where are you and what have you learned well Greg I would love to tell you that we're predictive and world class and run our business by large screen monitors all over our offices but uh I think unfortunately most of our most of our current status is is in the diagnostic stage and we probably have a toe in the water on the predictive um we we use uh views of rep performance and um Pipeline and quota coverage and pipeline health and we we drill into that in terms of the the source of leads and the type of accounts and do they match back to our icps and we're getting we're getting pretty good there at getting a good handle on the business and describing why things are moving or why they're not moving but um unfortunately we're probably not at the predictive just yet um and and I would extend my same thoughts to the wind loss analysis is that we do a pretty good view of what happened and and why it happened but um we're not at the um the view of being able to to to really understand and guide the future just yet right well you're being hard on yourself you know I remembered a time where you weren't in descriptive and you certainly weren't in diagnostic so you guys have made quite a bit of progress and that should be inspiring for those listening and watching right now you if you find yourself starting down the data Journey you know Steve is somebody who's been on that journey and has accomplished a lot and is now progressing to predictive which very few companies actually get to because level of diff difficulty is really hard what makes it so hard is this concept of a data architecture when and a data architecture allows you to collect and most importantly keep clean the data that you need to perform sales analytics all three flavors of it descriptive Diagnostic and and predictive and taking a step back and thinking about the data architecture is uh a big lift and sometimes companies don't do it and as a result of that they're swimming in dirty data that they can do nothing with so Steve could you describe for the audience um what your data architecture is um yes and the first thing I'll say is um we have something now that we did not have 5 years ago which is we have a really good it team a good leader and a good team beneath him and they have been indispensable for us even if we buy Cloud Solutions which we've had we have for the most part doesn't matter um whether it's integrating them leveraging them keeping the data clean um or customizing it the value of Our IT team has been uh has been great so if you don't have a really good partner in it I would uh recommend people Lobby to get one because it will really help you um we in terms of keeping the data clean we have had to take a a I'd say somewhat challenging meaning it's a lot of work and it's not glamorous but initiative we call MDM um Master data management for both our account customer and Prospect list and also for our products and we had we've done a lot of Acquisitions we've grown organically and inorganically so we've had a lot of accounts and different data sets thrown together and so um we we we couldn't live that way so we we had to create a a master data architecture where we have a parent child relationship and a single um master or golden record of each account and you can't create new accounts and we've needed that to keep things clean so again not glamorous but really valuable and important um second to that I would say that our architecture we' really um we we tried to think big and we really want to pull data from different systems in the company including from our Finance and Accounting system and our HR System not to mention our our Salesforce system and we've kind of tried to keep the end in mind meaning what are we trying to do with this we want to have certain outputs for sales managers for leaders and we want to do some Diagnostics so I would say that our architecture is um um very much around some master data management um we have a few systems that we rely upon and we've really we've been very successful when we started with the end in mind and and thought big about where we want to be to scale the business even if it's hard to do and those areas where we didn't quite think big or think about the end in mind I think we've struggled a little bit so that's that's really how we put it together Greg yeah so now I know why the partnership with it in your case was so important because you're pulling systems from Finance from HR you know systems that might not be within the sales and marketing stack and using that data as part of the feed into your master data management process and and uh I couldn't agree with you more it's critical it's hard it's hard to do that and there's no question but taking a step back and embracing the concept of MDM can uh can pay huge dividends that takes me into the next section which is you know what is your technology stack so if we were to confine this to sales you know share with the audience a little bit about these different cloud services that you've embraced you know all of the technology tools that you're using to try to uh enable this sales off strategy okay so our um we are a Salesforce shop you know we're um we're we're around a billion company and so we've tried to scale and we've um we've leveraged the um the uh the breadth and scalability of Salesforce to do that as well as the ecosystem so it is it is one of our foundational um sort of uh systems um within Salesforce um we we've added some tools and it is very nice to have tools that are natively or appear natively integrated to Salesforce so we have invested in a company called Sao um they're out of the Midwest us and uh they have really helped us with our content management and having tools that are very field friendly in terms of organizing and pushing content out to sales um we have an LMS a learning management system that is also integrated into Salesforce so we're very big on training and having it be required and testable and have managers see who's taken the training and who hasn't so we've integrated that into to Salesforce we are a user of LinkedIn we're a big believer in Social selling and using uh LinkedIn to uh find people to uh understand folks more and to really uh um supplement and augment the sales process so we brought that in as well as well as some other tools so that's really kind of our productivity tools on top of that Greg a big step for us has been investment in a tool called burst um there are other analytics tools out there um but burst is the one that we've chosen along with our marketing team for sales and marketing analytics and uh we're getting going with that there's a lot of potential there burst has the ability to pull in data not only from Salesforce but also from netw Suite from workday and other other applications that allow us to do a lot of very interesting things like compare rep sales rep tenure to sales rep performance you know we don't want to replicate rep data that's in workday um and have our own separate database really just pull it in and say hey when did this rep start and then how much time until their first deal and um are our reps who have been here 5 years or more more less productive than our reps that have been here 2 years we want to do analysis like that so burst allows us to tap into that data and and make those comparisons which which we are finding useful so I would say we're a Salesforce shop with some key addins um analytics layer on top and then we pull in data from other systems like netw suite and workday to uh really give us the insights that we're looking for okay so things I heard I heard CRM I heard uh mobile playbooks from Sao I heard Learning Management um obviously I heard social selling from LinkedIn uh burst for Predictive Analytics some things that I didn't hear and I want to ask you about them just because I want to know if you chose not to implement them for a reason um anything in the area of Knowledge Management um we we done um some Knowledge Management um I guess we we might use the term uh content and this is where we um want to uh push and make available whether it's sales-oriented or even more technically oriented uh information out to our sales and sales engineers and our you our Solutions are yep um and then some of that we also um use for uh forums meaning that there are lots of questions there are lots of documents where sales reps need to talk to a product manager and know this is not in the training and it's a very specific question so we use the concept of forums to both post questions but also of course store the answers and have those searchable yep um so that's that's um i' say that's as far as we are on the uh the knowledge management continum at this point okay anything in the area of incentive comp automation configure price quote um yes we we do do that we're um we we've recently made the decision and I guess I'm kind of you know talking about our our systems here we recently made the decision to go to uh kaladis okay and um we we want to do a couple things with this um one is we want to give and we're we're we're bringing this up so it's not locked yet so you're kind of catching this at a time where it's a 2B state where we want to give reps real-time visibility uh as well as what if types of scenarios you know where am I year to date what is my compensation if I close this deal which is made up of these types of products and services where will I be against my against my goal for the year how much of my quota will it retire um in addition we want to be able to efficiently and and quickly you know process commission payments and then I think the third part and it's uh maybe a cherry on the pi is and our CFO wants this is want to do um commission expense forecasting based on what I think I'm going to do this quarter what do I think my commission expense is going to be so I can do a a you know a draft p&l and that system will give us that as well so that's um something that's coming soon for us fantastic you know as you can see audience um Steve has a very well thought out sales op strategy and he has a very detailed technology stack that is allowing him to implement that strategy and be as data driven as he possibly could be we're going to take a short break uh and when we return we're going to focus on the difference between sales Ops and sales enablement which are two very different things and how the two should work together so come back after the break each day you receive hundreds of emails tons of text messages countless telephone calls and sit in too many meetings how do you find ideas to make the number with all this noise the SBI blog filters all this nonsense for you and presents only First Rate ideas to make the number simplify your life subscribe to one blog and read the best content go to salesbenchmarkindex.com And subscribe [Music] today welcome back my name is Greg Alexander and I'm the CEO of SBI my guest today is Steve rutage the SVP of sales offs and enablement at Genesis today we are discussing how to develop and execute a sales Ops strategy during this segment we're going to hear from Steve his views on the difference between sales Ops and sales enablement and how the two should work together so Steve let's start with that softball if you will so in your opinion what's the difference between sales Ops and sales enablement well I would say Greg that For Better or Worse um historically internally at Genesis we have not tried to distinguish we we've kind of put them together um and and as I as I talk to peers I I see that there are more distinctions and we kind of and you may your caller your listeners May sense that we kind of combine them here in meeting that we look at some of the more hardcore quantitative things like forecasting and win loss analysis quote to Cache those might be considered the more traditional sales operational type things which which our team does um there might be a category sort of in the middle which is these tools which is like the you know the Sao and the LinkedIn and social selling and just getting them getting them configured deploying them making them work making them useful um to me that's kind of the the bridge area and then sales enablement I would I would say these are the things that um sales really needs to be effective um in the marketplace you know do they have the content that they need do they understand the offerings that we have um do they have the training is it clear is it concise is it up to dat is it Persona based and so I guess we we kind of we combine it all into one group here for again for better or worse but y I would say that the difference is maybe the more quantitative tools versus the the training and content and and sales Effectiveness okay what I would add to that is a simple way to think about this is that sales Ops it's focused on making the sales team more efficient and sales enablement is focused on making the sales team more effective and combining Effectiveness and efficiency you know is a onetwo punch the output of that is you have a company that's easy to sell for and a company that's easy to buy from and it sounds very simple try not to confuse simple with easy that's hard to do to make a company easy easy to sell for is hard make a company easy to buy from is hard so I will tell you that this is the reason why we see organizations separating the two functions and in some cases we see sales Ops rolling into the sales leader and we see sales enablement rolling into the marketing leader because it's an extension of product marketing in a lot of instances or in some cases an extension of the lead development team of the demand gen organization so how do you feel about sales enablement reporting into marketing and sales officer putting into sales do you think it matters would it change the outcome what's your opinion on that um I I think the The View that I have on this and I like your distinction between the easy to sell for easy to buy from is we find it um we we rely heavily upon marketing uh marketing does our sales content and competitive analysis and positioning documents so there's no doubt that we rely upon product marketing hugely but the where we are right now Greg is is that the view that um we look at the the concept of the conditions of satisfaction of the customer and in our view our you know our customer we have external customers but our our customer that we're trying to uh work for every day is our sales team members and what are their conditions of satisfaction do do they have what they need is it easy to find is it effective is it up to dat and um I think by being in sales I um have almost by definition that advocacy of the sales team and my my goal is not to say this is done check the box my goal is to say do we have do our sales team members have what they need in their view not somebody else's but in their view does it meet their conditions of satisfaction and so because of that advocacy position um I have the opinion that um sales operation sales enablement at least part of that role should belong in in sales you know do we have what we need not someone saying I gave that to you therefore you have what you need to me there's a difference there and that um it requires constant attention even the best of organizations to make sure that we're being honest with ourselves yeah however we we do regardless rely upon our product marketing team hugely for the cont content um perhaps in an organization where sales and marketing R up to the same leader and for us they do not except maybe at the CFO level or sorry CEO level um if if they're combined in a single organization then I can see that being a little bit different but right now we have sales and marketing being different different organizations so for that reason that advocacy is is where I focus in interesting you know here's here's what I would offer you you know if you think about the revenue growth supply chain okay literally links in the chain you know all the way to the left you have corporate strategy if you will okay and then that links into product strategy and the job function that connects those two things is very often the strategy office you'll see a EVP of strategy or an SVP of strategy and that person is the interface into the product organization to make sure that the product road map is tight and targeted that the R&D dollar is spent in markets that are going to grow against competitors that we can compete with effectively Etc if you can continue along and you now think about how the product link connects to the marketing link this is where you see product management that's the job that connects those two organizations what does product management do product management tells engineering what to build and they determine that by listening to the marketing organization and understanding the needs of customers okay so that's another job function whose purpose in life is to connect two disparate organizations to each other in that case product and marketing when you think about the link from marketing to sales and you don't need me to tell you this but this has been a link that has been broken for way too long that connection point is usually sales enablement um what we see is that when the connection point is product marketing it's not connected product marketing is three-parts marketing one part sales where sales enablement is two parts marketing two-part sales and it's a good connection point and it serves to lubricate you know cross functional collaboration between marketing and sales very similar to the way product management does it between product and marketing and very similar to the way that the strategy office does it between the CEO and the CTO um now I'd be lying to the audience and lying to you Steve if I told you we see that all over the place we don't where we do see that is um in organizations that have very tight strategic alignment and and which is a hard thing to accomplish but when you get there um the benefit is great particularly in in your probability of making the number consistently and being a little bit more predictive so something to keep an eye on um first I guess step one if you guys decided to go in this direction Steve would be to separate sales Ops and sales enablement and then step two would be consider how to use sales enablement as a way to pull the marketing and sales teams together uh more tightly so that's my two cents on that concept I think it's a very good suggestion and for that easy to self four and pulling the two together I think um you given me some good thoughts here today and I think that uh there's some steps we can do to make those even tighter so I agree it's a critical link all right we're going to take one last break when we come back Steve and I will discuss what to do next if you are focused on developing and executing a sales Ops strategy so we call this the takeaway value and it's just after the break so stick in there for just a few more minutes do you have too many things to do and not enough time to do them is finding time to learn best practices almost impossible the SBI podcast is your solution turn time spent exercising commuting and traveling into productive learning time with a subscription to the SBI podcast SBI podcast listeners get unique insight into real world sales and marketing issues through interviews with your industry peers every week find us on iTunes by searching for sales Benchmark index podcast And subscribe today welcome back everyone Steve I would like you to conclude our time together today with some practical advice so let me ask you one final question that will allow you to summarize your thoughts so here it goes if you were hired tomorrow by a company and you were tasked with developing and executing a sales op strategy what would you do first second and third okay so you giving me the lovely uh hindsight and if we could do it all over again yeah basically we don't really love that and maybe sometime in our lifetimes we'll do this but not yet um I would say first and ironically Greg you you just touched on it which is that alignment it's kind of like if you don't get your act together up front you may get out of the gate quickly but you're you're the wheels are going to come off and it's it's going to be a lot harder than you think and that alignment I mean with the company the product and the marketing strategy um those need to dictate and inform and guide what you do with your sales organization from top to bottom what's important that you report on what do you train on where do you hire reps where do you maybe not higher reps this year um I'm not saying that you sit and wait with your arms folded until someone hands this to you sales needs to be part of that because sales organization knows what's going on in the market and they have lots to say but they have to be locked arms if if you will and part of that chain link to say you know what are our products that we think are winners in the market where do we really different differentiate um what is our message does it work what are our ideal customer profiles are those really defined are we are we making assumptions or are we actually defining them where are we placing bets what regions with what products and um and where do we uh where do we think we'll have influence in the market so I think if you get that aligned and all of a sudden all the feedback back to the marketing team about what kind of leads we're getting and what products we're pushing and where we're winning and losing it starts to make really good sense it's worth the effort upfront to align as best you can or even as sales to force that alignment it's not like it's all going to be done for you when you walk in so the more you can align and get clarity and work backwards the better um number two I would say is to get systematic I'm telling you if you take the time and you define a sales process have this sales process in your CRM system and you track your opportunities and your quotes you track who takes training you track your win loss reasons um we do a thing at Genesis where when we have a win we do an automated announcement out to most of the company hey we got a great win at such and such company sales reps love it people know internally hear about it um anyway if you if you you take the time and get the stuff you need in the tools then you can have your pipeline you can judge movement you can look at win rate and see how you're hitting your number so much goodness comes out of that if you take the time to get systematic now if you're a $12 million company you're probably not there you can probably use some spreadsheets and you you might have several you know only a handful of reps but when you get to be 100 200 500 million got to get systematic it's going to help you understand what's going on your life's going to be easier it's going to help you grow I would say take the time to get systematic um and so I would say do those first my my third Point as I'm thinking here I could have put this first but I I believe so strongly in aligning with the strategy and being systematic I think it's still okay which is to um investigate best practices that are out there I mean we have a really the sales enablement sales enablement um sales Ops uh role in the industry has has risen in my view to Great prominence we have lots of vendors that can give us lots of advice we have lots of peer networking groups lots of groups on LinkedIn there's it's it's an important role and there's a there's good networks out there and you don't have to invent the wheel yourself you don't have to figure everything out yourself or start with a blank sheet of paper a lot of things are being done out there that are interesting a lot of a lot of them you get from these podcasts so I would say to um don't reinvent the wheel reach out whether it's talking to your you know vendors or industry groups or networking events that happen because there's lots that you can learn fantastic advice really is and it uh it's great to hear you articulate that and have it be so crystal clear in your mind okay let me give you my two cents audience members so I'm going to give you some tough news if you're like most companies you think you have a sales op strategy and you simply don't most likely sales Ops is a Dumping Ground for all the things that need to get done that the field does not have time to do what you really have is a series of tactics stitched together so you can respond to the field in the head of sales with their random request in some reasonable time period unfortunately Ely this causes companies to miss their number too often and worse it causes the people in sales off's jobs to have no life working way too many hours and garnering little respect inside the organization we call this rooll corruption and it's plaguing many companies and it has to stop today hopefully Steve's example will motivate you to develop a proper sales op strategy and take that sales op strategy and socialize it with everybody inside the company get the respect that you deserve and get your life back here are a couple of resources for you to do that get a copy of this year's report that we've published called how to make your number in 2016 apptly titled and you can get it at salesbenchmarkindex.com for2 2016 report and this is what I use today to guide my conversation with Steve and it's a stepbystep guide on how to get these things done also you can have one of our experts lead you through a workshop which will help you develop a sales off strategy and most importantly convince your company that you need one sometimes an independent objective third party can be very convincing and by injecting that third party into the conversation it looks like you might not be pushing your agenda it might add credibility to the need for a sales off strategy it's the human nature there's no way around it if you want one of these experts to come see you go back to the website sales Benchmark index.com and this time to go20 2016 Workshop Steve you made a big contribution to our field here and uh you referenced the fact that the field has really developed over the last five years and the reason why that's happened is because guys that are in the job guys and gals that are in the job like you do things like this and contribute back to the field so I really wanted to pause for a moment and let you know how much I appreciate for your contribution that you made today oh thanks for your comments Greg and uh thanks for having me on I've enjoyed doing this great and a big thank you to our audience you know I appreciate the attention you give me every week you're busy and listening to podcasts and watching Web video is probably not on the top of your list but believe it or not about 100,000 people are listening and watching to this show now so I really thank you for squeezing me into your busy schedule and I'll conclude as I always do which is wishing in you much success as you try and make your [Music] number this has been the SBI podcast for more information on SBI Services case studies the SBI team and how we work or to subscribe to our other offerings please visit us at salesbenchmarkindex.com