Riding the Salesforce Wave with Megan James, Director of Sales Operations Lead at Knock

This week, we are talking to Megan James, currently serving as the Director of Sales Operations at Knock. We explore how Salesforce supports all sales ops functions, why Salesforce leads the way in sales ops, and how it can be beneficial to a career in sales ops.

• Megan’s Linkedin
• Knock’s website

Transitioning to Sales Ops 

Megan started as a lead generation specialist and then moved into Salesforce management by learning about it whenever the need arose in her work. Salesforce helps interface multiple departments in a company (including Supply Chain and Legal). Because of the multifaceted nature of the work, sales ops can be a very lucrative career.

Knock’s sales team structure

At Knock, Megan works as the sole person on Salesforce administration with three SDRs, fifteen account executives, and about a dozen Client Success Managers. Modern Sales Ops functions often work as Business Ops to support different areas of the business. 

Effect of remote work in Sales Ops 

For Megan, remote work has been very structured, productive, and proactive because people have been more accountable when working remotely as opposed to working in an office.  

Effect of the pandemic on Knock’s sales forecast

During the pandemic, Knock’s tool became a necessity for its clients and their forecasting process became more accurate.  Megan is helping the Knock team transition from spreadsheets to Salesforce’s standard forecasting capabilities.

Valuable sales metrics

Megan believes top-of-the-funnel conversion affects most teams, can be easily automated and can be integrated with marketing and sales functions. 

Career growth in sales 

Sales professionals need to see the big picture of the Ops process if they want to progress to senior Sales leadership positions. 

Megan’s sales ops inspirations

Megan credits one of her former CFOs who supported her growth and learning about the SaaS industry. She would like to have lunch with Steve, one of the superusers in the Salesforce Trailblazer community, who helped her immensely in her learning.

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