The Role of Sales Ops in Acquisitions with Chris Fezza of AdminWithin

This week, we are talking to Chris Fezza, currently serving as the Founder at AdminWithin. 

Chris shares insights into the significance of analytics in sales operations and planning and the growing need for technology implication from a psychologists’ paradox with a clinical psychology background. 

In conclusion, Chris shares the opportunities the sales ops world hold and the best sales forecasting metrics for 2021.

• Chris Fezza’s LinkedIn
• AdminWithin website

Integration of psychology and sales ops

Although Chris studied psychology in college with a major in clinical psychology, he never planned to pursue it as a career. An interest in the analytic part of psychology led him into sales ops. 

Chris always felt drawn to psychology because he wanted to understand how people’s minds work, how they go through a decision-making process, and what makes people tick.

Chris conducted a clinical trial for the final thesis, which exposed him to statistics and scientific methods applied to execute the trial. That is where sales ops caught his attention – analyzing the data, drawing conclusions from data and making sure you’re running the appropriate tests.

The significance of a salesforce CRM in sales ops 

Chris started his career as a research analyst, after which he stepped into sales ops. Due to pursuing a purely analytic role, his transition to sales ops was smooth.

While working for LivingSocial, he dealt with Salesforce as their main CRM. His key responsibilities were creating reports, thinking about what formulas can be applied, and having an inductive approach.

Is it worth investing in the technological aspect of sales?

The need for technology implementation into sales varies from project to project. Some companies have no sales ops yet and are growing the sales team and sales function. 

Whereas, established businesses with good sales teams need AdminWithin for planning annual cycle, running sales analytics, and creating a weekly/monthly service executives KPI.

70% of the sales ops work is on the Salesforce technical side.

Key considerations of acquisitions 

It’s best to implement Salesforce into the existing sales system rather than to reinvent the wheel. 

The type of selling model impacts the planning after which territories are recut and re-divided accordingly. 

The product does decide the nature of acquisition and the people that are an added benefit.

For a successful acquisition, a company should pick the best practices of acquiring and acquired companies and put them together for ultimate success.  

Existing customer base, datasets, and CRM should be considered and pass through a detailed evaluation and calculation of pros and cons. 

An insight into Salesforce Lightning migration

Salesforce Lightning migration adds up to the end-user experience. 

Companies spend a lot of money every year for a SaaS subscription with Salesforce, but not being on lightning restricts you to limited features. 

Lightning provides you with added benefits such as improving the existing workflow with lightning record pages. This shaves time off the ticket resolution giving layout flexibility to record all data on a single screen instead of different pages.

If lightning is used with their benefits, it makes migration a positive thing rather than a drain on a company’s resources, budgets, and team. 

Don’t restrict yourself to becoming merely compatible with lightning but take a step further to gain maximum benefits. 

Biggest sales ops opportunities for 2021

Sales ops need to plan for; 

• Tool upgradation and switching 
• Content switching efficiencies 
• Teams expansion 

The inflection rate is interesting right now, with sales ops teams using a myriad of different tools. 

There is a need to update your tools to bring additional benefits and have an annual reassessment to see each tool’s benefit. 

To streamline your workflow and platforms, strip out the things that don’t bring a positive ROI, and make your workflow seamless for your employees.

#1 sales metric: Target and involve decision-makers in 2021 

2020 took everyone by surprise, and it’s hard to know what 2021 is going to bring – hopefully more stability from a business perspective. The fundamentals of forecasts come down to your perspective about the health of a deal, prospects, and customers from a renewal perspective. Stay on top of the matrix, have a thorough understanding of the decision-makers, get them involved, and observe regular touchpoints to stay on top of the pipeline.

Prospecting is unpredictable in the coming year; you are not safe to assume that a two-week prior discussion is being worked on effectively. Things might change more rapidly than before, and deals can get yanked near the finish line.  AdminWithin caters to this problem by implementing well-defined explicit steps and a regular check on the deals.

Who in the sales ops world would Chris like to take out for lunch?

• Brad Smith – Co-Founder and CEO Sonar

Key resources

• WizOps
• Salesforce
• AdminWithin

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