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 different leaders as a way to learn from each other, answer tough questions, and connect the sales ops community.
Ganka Bobeva-Rosevear is the Senior Manager of Sales Operations at Intent, the data science company for the world’s leading online travel and commerce brands. Its Predictive Intelligence Platform uses patented technology to predict user behavior in real-time and identify the future value of every user. Over 450 innovative brands trust Intent’s predictions to deliver personalized user experiences that maximize utility and ROI.
In the past, Ganka has led the Sales Operations efforts in several high-growth SaaS organizations and split her time between the West and the East Coast.‍
fullcast.io: How do you define success in your role?
Ganka:Â Sales Operations is one of the roles in an organization that can encompass many or just a subset of responsibilities. As such, depending on the organization and its operations maturity as a whole, success can vary greatly. The way I interpret my role is to act as much as possible as a central hub of information where I and the team can strategically and tactically work towards scalability and reliability. Providing data insights and allowing data-driven decisions should be the by-product of setting up a successful operations function. Building a process that will still be relevant if your team quadruples in a year, or is cut in half, should always be top of mind.
‍fullcast.io:  How do you demonstrate ROI?
Ganka:Â Sales Operations is a main contributor when it comes to increased efficiency and productivity across multiple teams. The unique position of working across Marketing, Sales, CS, PS, Support, etc. ensures a greater level of understanding process gaps and can have a great impact on change management across many stakeholders. The decisions concentrated under Sales Operations can certainly lead to team and individual improvements which would not have taken place otherwise.
‍fullcast.io: What tools are you using? Is there a tool that’s been a game-changer?
Ganka: Salesforce is an absolute must for any growing organization. The platform scales to thousands and in some cases hundreds of thousands of users. I have used Salesforce for the last 7 years and would most likely find it difficult to operate without it. In addition, I have used a good number of third-party products integrated with Salesforce, but my top three favorites are DiscoverOrg, DocuSign, and LeanData.
‍fullcast.io: What is your biggest roadblock or unsolved problem right now?
Ganka:Â Sales Operations has made a comeback at Intent and as such there are a lot of quick wins we have been able to accomplish. We are now at a comfortable place in terms of revamping our sales process to take a step back and actually get smarter about the details we need to start tracking and analyzing. Building out a data bank, if you will, which we can withdraw from in the future and have confidence we are making the right assumptions and decisions.
‍fullcast.io: What’s the top goal for your team right now?
Ganka:Â Intent is going through a significant internal transformation as it relates to the sales process and internal alignment. We are fortunate to have had a successful sales journey so far but have realized the need for more structure and a better understanding of both our ICP and serving our partners in the most efficient way. We are working through establishing internal processes that are scalable and measurable. Relying on our internal expertise, we are excited about tackling standard growth challenges and applying both our experience and experimenting when we need to.
‍fullcast.io: What advice do you have for other growing sales ops teams?
Ganka: I recently attended a Sales Operations summit hosted by one of Intent’s investors, and enjoyed a hands-on exercise focused on lean process. One of the key takeaways for me was the notion that perfection of often unachievable, but elegance when it comes to process design is. Striving for a more organized and better-running machine is probably the number one goal for growing teams. That can be achieved parallel to fully understanding the needs of users and the organizational limitations, so get lean and build for scale!On a personal level, find your tribe of fellow Sales Operations leaders (thanks fullcast.io team for helping with that). We can all learn something new or get confirmation that the path we are on is the right one.Connect with Ganka on LinkedIn.
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