Operations and Enablement Reflections on The Qualified Sales Leader
tl;dr
Let’s build a revenue success (operations and enablement) data playbook based on The Qualified Sales Leader.
Getting Started
The Qualified Sales Leader (QSL) by John McMahon provides an education on motivating sales success through a ton of colorful, pointed anecdotes to deliver wisdom and “lessons from a five time CRO.” Although the book is focused on managers and leaders, it is, of course, a valuable read for the individual contributor as well as the operations and enablement practitioner. I won’t rehash overviews or reviews of the QSL. Rather, allow me to introduce the this project and its objectives.
The QSL is the sales manual of our time.
The Project
As the the focus of the book is on creating successful software sales teams, I would argue that at the very core of that success–and, really, at the heart of the QSL–is a specialized alignment from CEO to rep, and with every role in between, on process and language. I would further argue that in the real world execution of those processes and implementation of that language, that operations and enablement is key to scale of any size. Finally, I argue that the most critical element of an effective operations and enablement organization is data.
(I should add an aside re: the importance of data in ops and enablement, with a main theme about adaptation, evolution through data …)
Therefore, this project will identify ways for operations and enablement teams to support a qualified sales organization, especially where data plays a key role. We will work through the QSL chapter-by-chapter unpacking the lessons from the book for actionable insights and tactics that operations and enablement leaders and practitioners can use to help their sales organizations grow.
An aside. I propose that the operations and enablement functions need to be considered a singular function. I propose that we start to think about Revenue Success. In the installments that follow, rather than refer to “ops and enablement,” I will simply refer to “rev success.”
You
I’m simply working to add to the discourse to improve selling. Of course, like any idea, like the entire body of human knowledge, it’s a work in progress. And that progress needs your input. Please provide your feedback in the comments or send an email to mick@rejniak.com.
About me
I’m a GTM data scientist. As I’m writing this, I have about 15 years of experience as enterprise SaaS sales operations and enablement leader. Prior to that, I sold digital design services to large consumer entertainment brands, like Sony, Fox, and Comedy Central.