Building A Sales Operating System w/ Tyler Lindley & Amanda Sleger

Outbound Sales Lift

#66: Listen as Amanda Sleger, Sales & Marketing Director at Lone Fir Creative, guest interviews The Sales Lift host, Tyler Lindley, about building a sales operating system. They discuss how having a system impacts the bottom line, how businesses can go about developing one, and best practices for getting started.

Click here for full episode show notes, transcript, and more!

Why Systems Matter (0:55)

The five things a sales operating system should focus on are process, method, message, technology, and training.

The process is the steps that your sales team should take from prospecting to closing. The method is those tactics, behaviors, and best practices to turn prospects into buyers. The message is your ideas, value prop, and anything else about what your brand is saying.

Next are the materials you have to support your sales team throughout the buyer's journey and how you use technology to gather actionable data for your team. Finally, training looks at how you identify skill gaps in the process and level up your team through onboarding, one-on-ones, and coaching.

Having organization around your sales system and process allows everyone to grasp it easier from a growth and training perspective as you bring new people into the sales organization.

As salespeople, we are driven by closing revenue, relationships, and communication, but we are not perfect. We forget things, things drop off, and that's why having a tried-and-true system in place is so beneficial.

Developing A Sales Process (5:06)

The first thing that happens is that you have a tough time adding people to the sales team and then retaining those you walked in. So you want your first impression as a boss is that you have everything you need to have together.

Hiring and maintaining good talent is critical because there is so much turnover in this industry. Anything you can do to alleviate the chaos of onboarding helps.

Creating a playbook allows sales reps to take it with them and make it their own. Lastly, make sure your marketing and sales efforts are aligned.

Without a sales system in place, your sales team likely goes rogue. Everyone across the revenue organization should be speaking the same language, or else all sides suffer.

Where to Start (9:30)

It depends on what stage of growth you're in. If you've started your business already and you have at least one client, you have to audit what you've done to that point.

If you don't have a team, you may not be doing a lot of training and onboarding. First, you have to audit to see what you are doing in the five areas? From there, it's about deciding how to add your next person.

The next people to join should be SDRs, marketers, AEs, and success reps added as you scale. The more you give to brand new employees joining the revenue organization, the easier their onboarding is and the faster they impact your prospects and buyers.

Good communication, coachability, and curiosity are all very important. These are all things you can vet for during the application and interview process.