Deliver a seamless sales experience across the lead-to-order lifecycle

Just as professional rally drivers rely on a navigator to get them from A to B, so the sales function depends on strong sales operations support.

It’s the role of the sales operations team to generate, track, and progress sales leads; to capture, validate, and track opportunities as part of sales forecasting; to move those offers forward to the offer stage with a configured and competitive quote; and when the sale is made, to convert the purchase order into a valid sales order for fulfilment.

These responsibilities are beset by all kinds of challenges. Sales operations teams frequently find they have insufficiently accurate, easy-to-access data and insight-driven forecasting; that their sales technology is outdated; and that they have inadequate resources and roles that are not clearly defined. At the same time, teams constantly need both to recruit and retain talent, and to adapt to changing business models.

All these challenges often mean that sales operations teams spend much of their time dealing with day-to-day tactical issues when they would rather be thinking and acting strategically – looking ahead, developing plans, testing them, and then putting them to work.

Design, build – and transform

What’s needed is a smart, seamless sales operations model (think of this as a sales operations-as-a-service concept) that can be tailored to the culture, practices, and needs of the individual organization – and that empowers the people who use it.

It’s the bespoke nature of the model that makes the design stage so important. If a service provider is involved, it’s our view that the best approach is for that provider to work closely with its client organization, designing and mapping processes based on lived experience within the sales operations function, and also on relevant personas.

What should emerge from this deep dive into future aspirations and current practices is a target operating and service model. The organization and its service partner work together to design and set up services including policies, process rules, a control framework, and new ways of supporting sales operations team members.

The final stage in the transition is to move from current processes to a more streamlined and coherent smart digital model. Technology collapses processes and creates a tremendous opportunity to eliminate drag in a process and improve how an internal or external user experiences it. Focusing on customer experience not only delivers hard gains (ROI, margins etc.), but also qualitative benefits such as CSAT/NPS that translates to stickiness, repurchase, loyalty, and “mind-share.”

What does success look like?

At Capgemini, our digital sales solutions take advantage of innovative technologies and sales systems to integrate, streamline, and optimize sales touchpoints and processes across the lead-to-order lifecycle – delivering accurate, easy-to-access data, enhanced sales support, and data-driven sales analytics.

The aim is to enrich our clients’ digital sales strategy with relevant insights and data that drive operational excellence and efficiency across the sales function. And we’ve seen some truly transformative business outcomes, including 15–25% reductions in turnaround time, 3–5% improvements in win-rate, 15–25% increases in time returned to sales, and 10–20% improvements in net promoter score.

Everybody wins

Intelligent, integrated sales operations of this kind not only address those organizational challenges I outlined earlier in this article – they also provide increased value for a company’s customers and business partners.

When sales processes are efficient and cost-effective, and when sales operations teams are well informed and in control, everyone is happy.

To learn how Capgemini’s Empowered Sales Operations solution delivers frictionless, digitally augmented, data-driven sales operations that drives competitive advantage across your business, contact: deepak.bhootra@capgemini.com

Deepak Bhootra is an established executive with two decades of global leadership experience. He delivers process excellence and sales growth for clients by optimizing processes and delivering seamless business transformation.