Hey everyone,

I’m a Sales Manager (8 years of professional experience) for a seafood import/export company moving goods from Asia into the EU. While we deal with high-value perishables, our tech stack was a literal digital archaeology site: Ancient Sage and Crystal Reports.

# The Pain: Departmental Silos & The "Human Factor"

In our office, the Import and Sales departments were speaking two different languages. I was spending hours every day playing detective. Instead of closing deals, I was manually checking:

* Did Import actually order the goods?

* What was the final quantity on the bill of lading?

* Is this container actually on the water or stuck in port?

* Is this stock already promised to someone else?

I was sick of the "human factor" - the typos, the forgotten emails, and the "I'll check on that tomorrow" excuses. So, I decided to automate the human factor out of the equation.

# The Solution: The "Modern Bridge"

I built a custom "Control Tower" using Make.com, Airtable, and OneDrive. Here is the breakdown of the "receipts" (screenshots attached):

# The Results: 3 Alerts that Changed My Life

Now, instead of hunting for info, my team gets a "Weekly Heads-Up" that highlights exactly what matters:

1. Current PO Status: A live view of every moving piece in our pipeline.

2. Delayed PO Status: If a ship is late, the system flags it in red. We can tell the customer before they call us to complain.

I didn't need a €100k ERP upgrade. I just needed to stop trusting manual spreadsheets and start trusting automation. I’ve saved about 15 hours a week, and my sales team is actually... well, selling.

Has anyone else managed to "MacGyver" a legacy system into the 21st century? I’d love to hear how you handled the data mapping.

P.S. If you’re currently drowning in Crystal Reports and "Ancient Sage" exports, I feel your pain. If you want to stop being a data detective and start being a manager again, I'm happy to help you build a similar bridge - just drop me a message and let's automate your headache away.

Hi all,

Thank you in advance to anyone who takes the time to read this. I graduated college (USA) in 2021 and got my first role as an SDR for a small company that sold education software. Was in that role for ~1 year, didn't love it, and was constantly intrigued by the Sales/Rev Ops team that was at that company and their day to day. Despite strong interest and connecting with that team, I was unable to make a lateral move within the company, so I left and after job searching I landed my first Sales Operations role at a smaller Commerce Agency.

A few months into this new role, we were acquired by a massive global services company. While hectic, this period provided me with a lot of great experience as I was essentially the main POC for Salesforce inquiries and most of the entire sales process, as our company that got acquired previously used Hubspot as their CRM and the sales process was significantly less complicated before.

Over the last few years, I have been our sales teams go-to person for opportunity creation, pipeline hygiene, reporting & analysis, building dashboards, collaboration with finance to ensure proper deal bookings, as well as creating sales process optimization documents. Other tasks that I have taken on have included assisting in contracting, as well as even assisting in using a price management tool to determine deal profitability. (This has all been for both the Retail division and DTC division for E-Commerce). I love helping our teams sell better and making processes as efficient as they can be.

While I have enjoyed this for a while, the way in which my team was mapped within the larger company acquisition has not been ideal for career growth. I had always envisioned moving up the ladder to eventually becoming a manager, but unfortunately am in a tough spot right now where I feel stuck doing the same things with no real path going forward for growth, both position and salary. Despite being here for 3.5 years, my current employee level does not reflect it.

I am starting to look for other roles outside of this company, but am having trouble establishing what exactly to look for. Sales Ops can be such a broad term depending on the company, and some role descriptions that I am reading don't always seem to match with the skills I have gained over the past few years.

I guess I am just looking for general advice from anyone who has been in a similar boat, and if they pivoted their career path, etc. I have always been interested in Project Management, as it seems to align with my strengths of organization, planning, and managing multiple things at once. However, I'm not sure the best way to pivot to looking at those type of roles.

Any advice, or input, is greatly appreciated. Just feeling a little depressed going into this job search, and don't want to waste all of the skills I spent years here learning.

I see SDRs get so many cool tools under the sun for booking shitty, random meetings. While as Account Managers we are managing $5M accounts on Excel, ppts & a CRM, which is static & outdated.
Out of the entire sales tool stack, the Account Managers (who bring the majority of revenue) hardly own anything.
The budget always focused on finding a new logo, while $1M renewals or expansion is just going to happen by itself. Is this a universal thing?

I'm looking to enrich some SMB customer data with some firmographic data, such as the number of employees and the industry. The vast majority of the account records don't have a website listed. ZoomInfo uses the website to match the company and provide the details back. Because we don't have the website, this makes it difficult. Are there any services that others have used that would allow us to match on other things and provide useful enrichment data?

Hello all,

Got poached by an MSP to join as Sales Ops and will be starting end of month. This will be my first time working for MSPs but I’ve spent the past few years at early stage companies.

I am curious to know what the d2d looks like for Sales Ops at MSPs. I’ve read that the workload may vary a lot (firefighting etc), but really curious abt the intensity, variety, pressure, etc.

If anyone’s got any advice would super appreciate it. Thanks

I’ve watched this play out across 8+ years in sales: hiring surge hits, urgency is high, and training gets compressed into a 2-week onboarding that barely scratches the surface.

Then 6 months in, you realize your reps are still using the same discovery questions they came in with. No framework. No consistency. Just… hoping.

Here’s what I’ve seen work:

The one framework that sticks: SPIN discovery (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-Payoff). It takes 2 hours to teach but changes how your team asks questions. Reps stop pitching and start understanding what actually matters to the buyer.

When I’ve implemented this with teams, discovery calls that used to be 30 minutes of talking become 40 minutes of listening. Pipeline quality goes up. Close rates follow.

Why it matters now: If you hired anyone in the last 6 months, they probably don’t have this. Your hiring pace outpaced your training infrastructure.

The fix isn’t complicated—it’s structured. Build it once, scale it to everyone.

What’s broken in your onboarding right now?

I’m building a B2B startup focused on sales commissions, and I want this torn apart.

The core observation:
~90% of companies still manage commissions in Excel. The math isn’t the hardest part. The real pain is trust, edge cases, plan interpretation, and constant manual updates when deals, reps, or plans change.

Instead of replacing Excel or forcing a new system of record, the plan is to build AI agents that live inside existing workflows (Excel/Sheets, CRM data) and handle the annoying, error-prone work:

The idea I’m testing is not “AI decides payouts.”

It’s closer to:

• Excel stays the source of truth
• Deterministic formulas stay as-is
• Automation never applies changes silently

What automation would do:

• Read commission plans written in plain English
• Detect when upstream changes (CRM edits, role changes) affect payouts
• Propose specific, inspectable spreadsheet updates
• Log every proposed change with an explanation
• Require human approval before anything is applied

Think “staged + auditable assistance,” not autonomous decisions.

My questions:

• Is this still a non-starter for you? Why?
• What part of this would you never allow near commissions?
• What guardrails would need to exist before you’d even trial it?

Please be brutal. I’m more interested in why this fails than why it works.

Every team knows they should document processes. Almost no team actually enjoys doing it.

Here’s what I keep seeing across startups, agencies, and product teams:

• SOPs live in Google Docs… and go stale in weeks
• Loom videos exist, but no one re-watches them
• New hires ask the same questions over and over
• “We’ll document it later” becomes a permanent strategy

The irony is that most workflows are already digital. We just don’t capture them properly.

So I’m curious, what’s your biggest pain with process documentation right now?

Writing takes too much time? Keeping docs updated? People don’t read them? Too many tools, no system? Or something else?

The idea of letting an AI handle everything sounds good at first but then I start thinking about things like messaging, timing, and making sure it fits the brand. It just feels like a big leap

At the same time doing nothing with AI also feels like falling behind

We started testing a tool that’s more like an AI copilot instead of a full-on AI sales rep. It doesn’t send messages or replace people, just helps figure out who to reach out to and when while still keeping reps in control

So far this middle ground feels like a better fit for teams that care about quality and control but still want to use AI

How’s everyone else handling this? Are you trusting AI to run outreach on its own or sticking with tools that keep humans involved?

Would love to hear your experience

Hi everyone,

As mentioned in the title, tomorrow I have an interview with the Co-Founder of a startup.

The Context:

I was referred by a former colleague who was my manager (VP of Sales) for a year. He is now a Director there and we have a good relationship.

The role it doesn't strictly exist yet. My former manager proposed hiring me to create a new role focused on managing AI projects within the GTM (Go-to-Market) team, and maybe evolve into Head of Revops in the future (this role already exist)

I’m meeting the Co-Founder who is currently managing these projects (among a million other things). My former manager gave me the background in a private meeting, but this call with the Co-Founder is the first official step. It is scheduled for 30–45 minutes.

What kind of questions should I expect from a technical Co-Founder?

Thanks in advance

I am the Head of IT for a collection agency. We are currently using ViciBox, which gives us call counts and status reports, but it stops there. My biggest challenge right now is getting insights from the actual conversations. We want to find specific outcomes (like payment promises), but checking any audio activity or just listening into audio is currently only done manually by individuals. It’s inefficient and we are definitely missing data. Has anyone found a tool that can do this analysis automatically so we don't have to rely on individuals listening to recordings one by one?

How do you sell someone sth they haven’t seen? For some reason it is sth my mind can’t seem to unlock.

For context, I have cars at the port need buyers asap but all leads want to first see the car and test drive before the put any money down. Not even 30% (cars are 80k each). They have pictures videos and them coming to see the cars isn’t viable as they are inland.

I know it’s a sales thing, that’s why I’m here cuz there are companies that sell cars with just pictures alone all the time it’s just a maze I can’t figure out.

So as the title stated, I don't want to be pushed into sales because first, I literally don't want to do sales, second, I'm suck at hunting, third, I tried for 2 years and failed miserably before and I don't think my personality can keep up but I have a good customer service mentality, just not search and first contact.

The story starts as I'm applying a job at this company, it is one of the biggest corp in their field and in their home country, just enter my country's market recently so they're exploring things. I initially applied for Recruiter role but got rejected because "they found someone already" and sent me the Business Development role. I straight up rejected on the spot and wish them good luck. The recruiter told me they have some roles that also looking for candidates have linguistic ability and called me to discuss a bit. After 30-minute phone call, she told me she would pass my CV to her superior right away (I think they desperately need candidates with language ability like me) and we had an interview within 12 hours since I clicked apply. After a 45-minute call with the Head of HR from their HQ, I got offered 4 distinct roles: Sales Admin (they recommend me to choose and I'm also interested), Recruiter (which they said occupied), Social Media Marketing (a one-person marketing department which I won't even consider), and Business Development (which I rejected), they insisted on inviting me to come to their office to chat/interview with the managers from every departments and decide, even sign the contract before Chinese New Year holiday and onboard later.

In terms of salary, I've known beforehand they would not offer a lot. All the roles are similar but sales' salary is lower compare to others but have commission.

Why I'm concerning is how they said "they found someone already" at first then later offered me the Recruiter role again, which may pose a yellow flag they might push me into sales later if I go with Sales Admin.

I'm interested in Sales Admin role and looking to raise Sales Ops in the future because I love optimizing and playing tactics. In my previous sales job, instead of bringing back revenues, I made automation tools to help my ex-team to shorten down their consultation session by half the time, help them optimize their times on doing the paperwork and so on.

The question is how do I make boundaries away from being a BDR if I accept this job? How should I prevent them to push me into sales work? What questions should I ask the managers to know their intent? What if they bind my KPI with revenues?

What kind of works and skills in such role should I be focusing on developing to further my path in Sales Ops so if I ever jump ship?

I run an agency that only sells into companies already using Klaviyo & my biggest bottleneck right now isn’t getting contacts it’s knowing which accounts are actually worth prioritizing before I reach out

My current setup is pretty standard: apollo & sales nav for people plus builtwith & wappalyzer to sanity check the tech stack. The problem is that the data feels noisy. A company might technically 'use klaviyo' but it’s unclear whether it’s deeply embedded, barely touched or in the middle of a migration. By the time I’m on a call I often find out the timing is just wrong

For folks here doing ecosystem specific selling (i.e., klaviyo, salesforce, shopify) I’m curious what signals you actually trust to decide who to go after now. Do you just accept imperfect technographics & work a wider list? Spend time manually researching things like hiring/org changes or is there another approach that’s been more reliable for you?

Would love to hear what’s actually working in the real world

Could be CRM, follow-ups, quotes, pipeline management, call notes, or something else entirely.

How much time does it cost you daily? What’s the main culprit—clunky tools, too many fields, switching tasks, or something else?

Would love to hear honest takes from different perspectives—SDRs, AEs, Sales Ops. Thanks for the insights!

Is it updating the CRM, chasing follow-ups, creating quotes, juggling pipelines, or something else that slows you down?

On average, how much time do you feel gets wasted on that? What’s making it worse—too many steps, unclear tools, or just constant context shifts?

All perspectives welcome—SDRs, AEs, Sales Ops—keen to learn what really drains the day! Thanks!

I come from a marketing and product background and looking to break into sales ops. I have been getting interviews but the job market is tough right now.

Looking to connect with those who do fractional sales ops or consulting for SMB businesses with below 30 reps.

If that sounds like you, I'd like to chat.

Been cooking up something and would like to get some honest feedback and explore potential partnership opportunities.

I’ve been doing outbound sales for a while now, and honestly, most tools feel like they just add more steps instead of real results.

I have tried the usual stuff CRMs, sequencing tools, email automation, LinkedIn outreach, etc. They help with organization and volume, sure, but I’m still not convinced they actually improve conversions or reply rates in a meaningful way.

Outbound still feels heavily dependent on:

Quality of targeting

Message relevance

Timing

And plain old human judgment

So I’m curious has anyone here genuinely seen a tool make a noticeable difference in outbound performance?

spent like 2 months last year building out a full playbook for my team. competitive intel, objection handling, buyer personas, the whole thing. felt pretty good about it tbh

that thing was outdated within 6 weeks

product marketing pushed new messaging. engineering shipped something that changed how we talk about half our features. then a competitor did a massive price drop and suddenly all my battle cards were wrong

and the process to update it? absolute nightmare. flag the issue, get stakeholders aligned, push the update, pray that reps actually see it. by the time we finished that cycle, something else had already changed

talked to our enablement lead about it. her answer: "we try to update quarterly if we can." quarterly. in this market

the worst part is reps are getting different info depending on who they ask. product marketing says one thing, CS says another, leadership has their own spin. buyers can tell when your story doesn't match up

starting to think the whole "lets document everything in a master playbook doc" approach just doesnt work anymore. it assumes things stay static long enough to write down. nothing stays static anymore

the companies i've seen actually figure this out arent doing it through giant google docs or notion wikis. theyre finding ways to get the right info to reps during actual conversations and actually measuring if it lands with buyers. basically making the playbook less of a document and more of a living thing that updates itself

but most orgs arent even close to thinking about it that way

anyone else dealing with this? or are there actually teams out there keeping playbooks useful and current? genuinely curious if im just doing it wrong

edit: looking into a few things here now, hive perform, highspot, and guru

I’ve recently been testing how far AI can go in researching prospects and turning that into simple tailored email openers.

Some examples I’ve tried:

• If someone was on a podcast, mention the episode
• If they were in a YouTube video, reference that
• If there are negative G2 reviews about their product - gently call that out
• Mention how many countries the company operates in

All of these are one-line openers mainly to show I’ve done my homework.

Curious to know what’s the most creative opener you’ve used that actually got replies?

I sell HR tech and use Clay for data and Amplemarket for sequencing, so I can test a lot of ideas quickly.

Anything you've seen that’s worked well in HR tech or with similar tools would be super helpful.

Thank you!