I was speaking with a past SaaS client of mine and we were talking about the challenges he sees that his potential clients have with their sales operations.

He said: They just need to get back to the basics.

But what are the basics? When they say “Master the Fundamentals” – what does that mean for sales and sales operations?

Let’s go through my experience of the basic fundamentals in each category.



Fundamentals of Sales Operations

1. *Get Leads **
2. *Contact Leads **
3. *Get Lead on the phone/video/in-person **
4. *Have a structured sales process for conversation with Lead, that includes Rapport, Empathy/Discovery, Credibility Building, Hope, Urgency **
5. *Do follow-ups **
6. *Get agreement to purchase **
7. *Complete paperwork/admin/onboarding **
8. *Get money or set up payment **
9. *Log information in the CRM **
10. *Repeat as desired **

That’s it. That’s the list. To help with where I generally see gaps in the fundamentals, I put a * next to the ones that most companies are missing. Yeah – all of them.

Common Mistakes in Sales Operations

Here is what I generally see done instead:

• Try and get some leads, appointments, calls.
• Don’t have enough leads for the team.
• The salespeople email whenever they get to it, probably don’t call. Definitely not quick enough.
• Unstructured conversations because you’re supposed to let salespeople ‘sell’ the way they want and you can’t structure their process or tell salespeople how to sell.
• Set follow-ups that probably won’t show/answer.
• If the lead doesn’t answer, make an attempt or two to reach them, then move on.
• Lack of useful, detailed information in the CRM.
• Incomplete or inaccurate admin, paperwork, onboarding information.
• Ineffective (based on sales/revenue results) repeated continuously.

You can try and dispute this, or say you are different because your team has a process, or makes their calls, etc. And it is possible that your team is the exception that hits every fundamental with every lead. But I am going to guess, based on a whole lot of experience talking to, examining, and working with sales operations, that the fundamentals are missing.

The nice thing is that at any moment you can make a choice to get back to the basics, to focus on the fundamentals. There are different variations of it, but here is the truth: Greatness is achieved by doing the basics/fundamentals perfectly, each and every time.

Another version: Do the boring, basic, fundamentals each and every time and you will achieve great results.

Why We Avoid the Basics

The problem is that humans don’t like boring or basic or fundamentals. We like fun, exciting, different things that give us results that lead to gratification.

Most humans don’t do well going to the gym for weeks on end and seeing no results. Same with eating healthy for a few days. Same with trying not to spend money for a month and expecting to see big gains in our wealth. Professionals, on the other hand, understand that the basics, fundamentals, and “boring” things are the key to success when the game starts.

Think of that basketball superstar that takes a thousand shots each day, no matter what. Or that pro golfer who will hit thousands of balls a day at the range. Most people just want to go play basketball – that’s the fun part, overly indexing the confidence they feel about their skills.

Same goes for salespeople.

Leveraging their confidence – in themselves, their product, their ability to talk themselves into and out of any situation historically – they want to just jump into sales conversations. Maybe completely unprepared. Maybe without doing the lead generation or lead contacting, just thinking sales is about being picked for the team, put in the game, and getting the ball to make the game-winning shot. Over and over and over again.

• Not making their follow-ups.
• Not entering useful info into the CRM.
• Not having a repeatable process.

“I don’t need practice, just put me in the game!”

The Roadmap to Fundamentals

Let me give you the roadmap to the fundamentals:

• Get leads
• Get leads on the phone
• Have a sales process and scripting where valuable
• Ensure follow-ups are made
• Have a process for CRM/Information compliance
• Ensure admin, paperwork, and onboarding are done completely and accurately
• Train sales and persuasion skills
• Train leadership skills

If you can build processes and systems and leverage technology for those fundamentals, I promise you will be ahead of a huge percentage of other companies, sales ops, and sales teams out there who are just playing sales.