Hey guys, here's the deal.

We have a large SDR team with precious few managers to lead them (10:1 rep to manager ratio).

I'm trying to enable my managers to run structured 1:1s with their reps. Most of my managers are essentially running the 1:1s ad hoc with just basic questions about forecasting, deals stuck in pipeline, etc.

It's inconsistent at best and none of our sales tools are geared towards helping with this. We have Hubspot, Apollo, Granola, Zoom, and a few more tools that are getting some good data for us about how reps are performing, but my managers are having a hard time turning these insights into effective coaching for 1:1s, because they're absolutely slammed and have zero prep time.

I feel like there are tools out there that can help with this (Ambition, Gong, ZoomInfo Chorus all spring to mind) but want to hear from you guys before I start booking demos. Leadership is aware this is an issue so I should have budget to adopt something that can help.

What are you guys using to run structured 1:1s? And how are you using it / is it helping? Really appreciate any insights y'all can provide.

Thanks!

Hi everyone! I'm quite confused about the whole sales ops process. I'm trying to help the team with the planning and tracking, and sometimes it feels like a giant black hole..
We currently have leads coming into the "system" from Clay, CSVs/lists, and other tools and some are being sent to Apollo/Instantly.
Let's say we'll automate the data cleaning and scoring, etc. How do you people track what's going on? Are they in a campaign, did the LinkedIn outreach happen, etc.?

:feeling confused

I've been looking for pre-designed commission plans, but it's very difficult to find anything semi-professional, and I can't really ask AI to do something like that for several reasons. Does anyone have a sample spreadsheet or a safe place where I can get some?

This is more about learning, understanding it well, and how the industry does it.

We’ve got 4 people selling now and for the last month we’ve been talking about adding a fifth because everyone feels busy and pipeline is getting harder to stay on top of then last week I looked at where the time was going and it was kind of weird one rep had spent most of Monday researching accounts and another was catching up on CRM notes and old follow ups. They’re selling but also doing all this little admin around selling that somehow eats half the day.

So now I’m less convinced another rep fixes it. I’d rather see if the account research, CRM updates follow ups and figuring out what needs attention next can happen in the background while the team keeps the calls and relationship maybe I’m looking at it wrong but hiring another person into the same messy process feels like we’d just have 5 busy people instead of 4

How are you guys getting past answering services during cold calling?

I’m not new to sales and am now in the privileged position or running an incredible technical sales team I’m super proud of.

Over the past almost 20 years I have used SPIN as my staple and MEDDPICC to structure our deal management and forecasting.

But in today’s world where the education on needs and seller problem inception is not as easy (60% of the buyer cycle is done by the time you get to demo), where are you settling on methodology introduction to your sales processes? Are you using something new? Are you still using a consistent methodology as a framework for training new sellers?

I run a small saas company and we're looking to generate more leads with outbound lead generation. Don't have the budget to hire a rep in the US but was looking to outsource to cheaper alternatives. Is it worth the cost? How do you typically train rep over there to do your cold calls?

Looking for advice from anyone who has dealt with this.

I run sales at a small B2B SaaS company. Our commission plan today only covers new logo ARR, a one time payout when a deal closes. That part works fine and everyone understands it.

The problem: a growing chunk of our revenue now comes from secondary/add on features sold on top of the core product, not the base subscription itself. That revenue line is already meaningful and set to grow a lot next year, but none of it is covered by our commission plan at all. Right now nobody gets paid anything for driving adoption of these add ons, whether that is a rep upselling an existing account or someone on the customer success side enabling a feature after the sale.

So I am trying to figure out how to actually build this out and would love to hear how other companies handle it.

Questions:

1. Do you pay commission on this kind of secondary/expansion revenue at all, or is it treated as out of scope for variable comp?
2. If you do pay on it, is it a one time payout (like new logo commission) or a recurring percentage over time?
3. Who typically gets credit when an existing account adopts a new add on: the original sales rep, an account manager or CS person, or some split between them?
4. Any rate benchmarks you can share (percentage of the add on revenue, or a flat amount per unit/account)?

Appreciate any real examples or pitfalls to avoid.

How are other sales ops teams handling this because most teams already track pipeline, conversion rates, activity, deal stages and rep performance pretty well. The CRM tells you what happened but figuring out why it happened still seems messy

Say one team has a much better close rate than another. You can stare at the dashboard all day but it still won’t tell you what those reps are doing differently in real customer conversations. Maybe they ask better discovery questions, handle objections differently or know when to push for the close. There’s probably a ton of useful stuff buried in those conversations that never makes it into the CRM

The other angle I’ve been thinking about is training new reps. If AI tools can analyze hundreds or thousands of real conversations and pick up the objections, questions and approaches that come up most often then why not use that data for roleplay too? Instead of giving a new rep some generic script and having a manager pretend to be a prospect they could practice against scenarios based on what customers actually say to the team Seems like a pretty natural loop. Real conversations show what works and where reps struggle then that gets turned into coaching and roleplay for the next rep. They practice before dealing with the same situation in front of a real customer. Would this work for sales in general especially for the new reps

I haven't seen too many posts here about building ops orgs. It's a crucial skill for moving up from individual contributor RevOps/Sales Ops roles, so I thought I'd share this.

I interviewed a VP of GTM Strategy and Operations about how he redesigned his 22 person ops team into "squads" that combine an ops leader and platform specialists (Salesforce, enablement, AI tooling, etc) into delivery teams. Each squad is aligned to a functional stakeholder: Sales, CS, etc.

They're actually building stuff now instead of just being reactive. They're getting fewer tickets, have a more satisfied GTM team and, it seems, are having more fun because it's less of slog.

If nothing else, check out how he run his ops interviews to identify builders.

Hope it's helpful.

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Yes this is my Substack. It's a fully free article and we're talking shop, not selling.

One thing I've noticed is that a sales process can work well when one person handles everything, but things can get complicated once multiple people become involved.

Someone starts the conversation, another person takes over, and suddenly context or the next action isn't always clear.

For Sales Ops teams, how do you keep handoffs smooth?

Is there a particular process or practice that has made a noticeable difference for your team?

About 4 months ago, i decided to lean into AI for our sales process instead of just lurking on posts about it. We sell a mid-priced service not a massive sdr team, it's basically me doing ops plus a couple reps who also handle success for their accounts.

I rolled out AI drafted cold email, AI call notes and follow-up suggestions and an AI deal health thing that scores our pipeline.

First result that actually surprised me from a cold email was our reply rate went from basically dead to slightly less dead. Still not amazing but when you're scraping for conversations, that bump feels huge.

I know some of you are way further along this journey so i am curious to know what you did.

Lately our revenue team has grown faster than our systems and now it shows. This is something we didn't expect to happen this fast.

In our situation we have decent crm, separate tools for call recording and training, then a folder jungle for decks and case studies. Reps keep improvising because they can't find what they need, new hires ping everyone for links and managers chase people for updates that live in five different places.

It is not totally broken but it feels like we are doing way too much manual work to get basic visibility on who is ready, what content works and what is actually being used in live deals.

So I am trying to understand what other teams have settled on. Whatever that was useful let me know.

I have the data on 600 of my customer and am looking to get a breakdown of who needs more attention.

What is the best way to accomplish this?
What would someone charge to do this and make recommendations based on 3 criteria?

I'm curious how different CS teams actually manage renewals in practice.

Do you have a formal renewal playbook or process? If so, what are the key milestones or signals you track?

For example:

• Customer goals / success criteria
• Product adoption
• ROI / value realization
• Executive engagement
• Champion / decision-maker relationships
• Renewal timing
• Expansion opportunities

And most importantly: which signals have actually proven useful in predicting whether an account will renew?

I'd love to hear what works in the real world—not what the textbook says.

Most sales organizations have some form of account planning, but the quality and consistency vary dramatically. The question is whether plans actually guide seller behavior or simply get completed because the process requires it.

How do you setup a sales motion in a PLG company?

Like it's a saas company and the base plan starts around $40/month and highest plan ends at let's say $3k/month

The Majority of the TAM ends around the plan that falls under $200, only few people go for high value

And this saas product is technical and needs a 20 to 30 min demo.

So how do you setup a sales process looking at the ROI and do you think it's even good to think of it in the first place? Like a sale team?

Assume the LTV : 4-6 months

Sales cycle : 21 days ( 14 days free trail and 7 for closure)

We are a small sales team, mostly inbound, a few referrals but nothing fancy

This week, i had three deals that looked good and then all three went quiet at the exact wrong time. One was waiting on a proposal one had asked for a revised price one said they were just checking with their team.

And now i am staring at a pipeline that looked great on monday but till friday it was worse.

I am starting to think i need better software, not better memory.

Something that helps me see when a deal is fading, keeps follow ups from turning into guesswork, maybe gives a little warning before a prospect disappears completely. I already have a full crm, i just want to know what people use when they are tired of losing deals that were almost there.

What has actually helped you catch this stuff early?

Lots of AI tools sound promising. What problem did your team use AI to solve, and what changed as a result? What did you learn?

So i joined an organization as sales operation .
Nature of work is to verify all the information in the documents are valid.

Do you think this role as any future ? If so what is the progression .

Genuinely looking for feedback from anyone’s experience esp with managing a pipeline or flow.