How To Influence People In An Organization: Ella Pebbles of Aircall

Ella Pebbles jumped onto Sales Operations Demystified to share her wonderful journey and how to influence people in any organization. Check out all the other episodes of Sales Operations Demystified here.

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Key Takeaways

Ella fell into sales operations…

Ella studied maths, operations, and statistics and then took on a number of analyst roles in finance… then someone in operations decided that Ella looked like she had a good profile for sales operations. This led to Ella being scouted and shipped off to San Francisco to join a sales operations team.

The first thing Ella will do when she joins a new sales ops team:

The first action Ella will take when joining a new sales ops team is to create a very simple report for each sales rep to show them the numbers that they need to achieve in order to hit their quota for the next month.

The very act of showing each rep this data should build its own momentum. Reps must first understand and have visibility of leading indicators if they are expected to influence them.

Understanding internal dynamics

Ella has a very good sense of understanding of how to influence people within her organization. She has only recently expanded the sales ops team with a dedicated resource, prior to this she has been utilizing resources from other parts of the business to support her. And now she does have a team of two, she is shielding this person from other demands of the organization until he is fully ramped.

How Ella works with sales reps

When communicating with reps (Ella has a one on one relationship with each rep), Ella first tries to understand:

  • Where they are coming from
  • What they need
  • What’s driving them

She then uses this data to communicate with them in a meaningful way…

“There is no one number that will tell you what you need”

Ella states that “there is no one number that will tell you what you need”. However, Ella most enjoys measuring positive numbers such as win rates. This is because Ella sees the core role of operations is to drive business success.

Biggest sales ops inspiration:

Ella’s biggest sales operations inspiration is Brad Kinnish, who used to be the CFO at Ella’s previous business: Maryn Software.

  • Brad Kinnish – Chief Financial Officer at Aryaka Networks

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