Welcome to Sales Ops Leaders, an interview series featuring sales ops professionals in all industries, company sizes, and stages of their career. We’re featuring leaders who work in all aspects of sales operations as a way to learn from each other, answer tough questions, and connect the sales ops community.This week, we’re featuring Bill Dillmeier, who shares his insights to the Finance side of Sales Ops. As a Consultant with EquitySpring Partners, Bill advises and coaches executive teams on how to build and execute world-class strategies in Sales, Marketing, and Finance. Over the past 5 years, Bill has worked with both startups and large companies building success toolkits that include Benchmarking, Business Modeling, Scenario Planning, as well as Analysis and Tracking modules.
fullcast.io: As an FP&A executive, what is your role in the sales ops process?
Bill: As an FP&A leader, I play a lot of different roles in the Sales Ops process – Finance Business Partner, Coach, and Consultant.
- Finance Business Partner – I work with leaders to build operational and strategic plans that align with company objectives. This includes an end to end business plan with a staffing plan, monthly targets, and KPIs to measure progress
- Coach – This is the ongoing process of providing Business Intelligence and recommendations on how to increase sales velocity. Examples include weekly pipeline analysis, AE scorecards, lost opportunity analysis, etc
- Consultant – Here I use external benchmark data and industry best practices to help leaders answer the question, “Winning is…” These guideposts (not rules) can create new business processes or set a level of accountability for teams to manage against
fullcast.io: How do you define success in your role?
Bill: For me, success is partnering with each business leader to create and execute plans that drive the business forward. For example, when I work with sales leaders, I start with establishing targets then validate the assumptions using a number of approaches:
- Bottoms Up – Do we have enough sales capacity to meet the target? I.e. number of Account Executives x Quota x Win Rate
- Top Down – Is the marketing funnel big enough to achieve target based on the current or anticipated win rate?
- Are we paying the right amount for each new dollar of Annual Recurring Revenue?
Then I create a suite of reports that provide both Finance and Sales real-time feedback on the progress to target, both in total and at an AE level.
fullcast.io: How do you demonstrate ROI?
Bill: These are three areas that I focus on to drive ROI with Sales management:
- Process – Instilling scalable and repeatable methodologies like the sales model (Consultative, Targeted, or Solution), pipeline discipline (sales stages, close dates, etc), and compensation planning to drive the right behaviors
- Data – Understanding what the data (funnel conversion, deal size, win rate, etc) is saying about the trajectory of the business and determining what steps need to be taken to change it
- Feedback – Developing a communication loop in which sales and marketing come together to celebrate success as well as further refine who the customer is and the best mechanism to engage them
fullcast.io: What tools are you using to do your job?
Bill: These are my go-to tools to manage the science of sales:
- Data Acquisition – Salesforce; by having clean and consistent data I build queries and reports that address the area I want to focus on
- Analysis/Recommendations – Excel; through custom fields and calculations, I create informed decisions for senior leaders
- Visual Management – Chart.io; this is my favorite tool to present data from multiple sources (Salesforce, Marketo, etc) no matter where you sit in the organization
fullcast.io: What are the biggest roadblocks to completing your tasks?
Bill: Talent – I have worked with some amazing organizations and each one has always been looking for talented Sales Development Reps, Account Executives, and Customer Success Reps to help lead them forward.Connect with Bill on LinkedIn.
