In 2021 I was recruited to a SaaS robotics company to build out the Sales Operations function. One of the largest projects I took on was improving the sales process, specifically overhauling the CRM and coaching sales reps, in order to support pipeline predictability and increase win rate.

Director, Sales Operations

Path Robotics - 2022

⭐ Supplemental Content:

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Thought Leadership on Revenue Operations & Enablement

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The project started with an investigation across multiple teams to form a broad understanding of what had worked in the past and where there might be low-hanging fruit for improvement.

One of the most challenging aspects of the project was that data had never been collected in an organized or sophisticated way, nor was there any one single source of truth, and individual contributors to the process were storing relevant data on their individual devices.

This overhaul relied on extreme patience in pulling together several stakeholder and leaning on various teams to help peel back the layers of what was happening throughout the sales pipeline.

Fortunately, the task of digging through mass amounts of disparate data informed an impressive polish of the process, and the result of the improvements allowed us to uncover a hugely impactful insight which would go on to exponentially impact our win rate.

A view of the current process compared to what the final impact will look like.

In short, the stages will be reduced from 6 to 5, reframing early in the funnel based on whether or not a deal is eligible to move forward, and using stage gate criteria for consistency in the process, and with built in checks for alignment between the sales rep and the prospective customer.

By first identifying major themes impacting the current process, were we able to form an intentional strategy around the necessary improvements. Those themes included:

1. Deals Stalling: many in the Assessment Approved stage for > 90 days
   • Potential indicator that more clarity is needed on the current qualifiers for the DM Bought In Stage (ROI? MSA?) and support to gain this information sooner in the process
   • MSAs shipped in Q4
   • Control of where deals stall
2. Inconsistent Part Review: in terms of timing, information tracking and recall in HubSpot
   • Potential indicator that leveraging the system to support this process could save time and add standardization
3. Inconsistent Proposal: difficulty today pulling together the MSA both in terms of information gathering for build and distribution
   • Indicator the CRM system can be leveraged better and integrated with a proposal software to further streamline

In order for the process overhaul to be successful, we placed a large emphasis on reps entering their data into the CRM. This was a large area for improvement in this particular sales org, so we made the training regarding the process improvements extremely clear as to what information was to be collected, how, and why, as well as built into the system stops and checks to hold reps accountable.

Below is a preview of how we introduced each stage inside the process, including a clear Definition, Entry and Exit Gate Criteria for the stage, applicable CRM Actions, and which team was Accountable for those actions.

Process Breakdown Stage By Stage

Meeting Set Stage