When companies are looking to grow their business, they tend to focus on ramping up their sales teams. After all, sales is the engine that brings in the revenue. But, if you have ever been a part of a sales team, or even just closely interacted with sales reps, you have seen how important it is for the sales engine to have the right support functions if it is going to run smoothly.

Disputes over account ownership, disagreements over territory assignments, and disconnected interactions with customers can cause disruptions that keep sales from achieving its growth targets.

Keeping the Engine Running Smoothly

One of the key support functions to keep the sales engine running at peak performance is sales operations. As a sales organization grows there is a need for controls and processes to minimize growth disruptions. This requires a dedicated group to assess, define, implement, and enforce the policies that allow sales to operate as a coordinated, highly effective team.

The need for sales operations was something that Tableau Software realized several years ago. The company provides advanced analytics and visualization technology to help people see and understand their data. While they were growing at a rapid pace, they saw the need to provide better support for their sales teams as they expanded in size and geographies.

Why the Right Data Matters

Evan Randall was the first employee in a sales ops role at Tableau and is now the Vice President of the sales operations team. From the beginning, he understood the importance having the right data to keep sales performance on track.

As a user of Salesforce CRM, Randall was interested in the Data.com products when he first learned about them, but it was when his team analyzed internal data on sales rep productivity that they took action to improve the quality of the account-level data on customers and prospects.

The Benefits of Great Data

By using Data.com to automatically update and enrich their account information in Salesforce, Tableau’s sales operations has been able to help sales:

• Reduce the time required to research accounts, resulting in a 3% improvement in sales productivity

• Optimize territory planning and assignments, providing an additional 5% lift in sales productivity

• Improve collaboration on accounts that span geographies and corporate divisions, allowing Tableau to find new opportunities for cross-selling their solutions

For more on Tableau Software’s use of Data.com, download this new Nucleus Research case study.