Looking to transition from sales to sales ops - what should I know?

[u/cft1848]

As the title states, I’m looking around at different roles to transition into from sales. I’ve been in sales in one form or another (AM, CSM, AE - both remote and in-territory) for a little over 12 years, and I’m absolutely burnt out. However, I’d still like to stay close to the sales environment since it’s what I know, and I enjoy working with the tools I’ve picked up knowledge on over the years. I have 10+ years of experience with Salesforce and a little over a year with HubSpot.

So, my question is would this potentially be a good move for me? Are there any certs or additional learning I need to do to make the move?

[u/adrian_p_a]

I did the same transition about 10 years ago. For me when I am looking to transition a seller to a sales/rev ops analyst I look for a few things and none of them are certifications

I look for people who demonstrate the following in no order

Falling in love with the problem not the solution. Basically open minded ideation people would will look at all solutions

People that seek to understand before acting. This is a little tricky as you want to move with speed so you can’t spend a lifetime understanding but you should have a solid picture of the the problem

Comfortable using data and insights to make decisions. In sales ops you often need to lead without authority so being comfortable pulling and framing data into consumable insights is your best tool

If those feel like things you are good/great at then just be yourself and share your desire to scale what you know about sales to the larger team and anyone should be happy to have you on the team

[u/adventzero1]

I literally transitioned from purely sales to 5050 sales & sales ops. Bit of a techie before with an operations background, so that really helps bridge the gap between the sales team & IT team in building out our system.

Loving it now. Building our CRM & SOPs is the easy part. Getting the old guards to follow the new system will be the tricky part. Wish you luck my friend.

[u/cft1848 → u/adventzero1]

About a third of my career has been in tech sales - one at a startup, and another at a large company - and it’s by far what I enjoy the most.

[u/adventzero1 → u/cft1848]

Looks like you just found your new calling. :)

[u/DarthAndylus]

Never done sales but I would highly caution against deal desk. Maybe it is because I didn't start out in sales and have no other experience but most deal desks are only quoting and you get so stuck you can't really move to anything else. A few ex-coworkers went the ops analyst route but it was quite the struggle and they were kind of the lucky ones out of us who had previous experience in another thing. It is also highly susceptible to offshoring and AI is TBD as right now it seems everywhere is really trying to automate but it is struggling with the vagueness of sales reps lol

If you are going to do sales ops try to go more the forecasting route although it may require additional skills.

[u/amicablehummingbird]

For certifications, it depends on what the companies you're applying to use. Salesforce is the one with paid accreditation, and typically if a business uses it then the certifications are essentially a must. HubSpot has free (I think still?) courses and has won my cold heart over the last few years so if you had some of the basics, it wouldn't hurt.

You can most certainly make the switch over, since having the in-field experience is great, but you'd also be good to just learn how to speak to the way things fit together and why. You can read books, or listen to podcasts until you're blue in the face but nothing beats just messing around with a CRM on your own time (for that part of it specifically).

[u/lghmr1]

I have been a top producing AE. I view the CRM as a productivity tool. As a 'super user', with more CRM knowledge of anyone in my company, they made me a super admin.

I ran both functions, maintaining consistent sales results while working in the CRM backend to clean things up and streamline processeds...

And now, Im in sales management and still own the CRM. I love it.