The Balance of Effort in Sales

The blogs this week have been about the other person going most of the way.

Whether it’s a prospective customer and your salesperson, where the salesperson truly can’t want the deal or make most of it happen for that customer to truly be successful. On the path for that prospect to becoming a customer, they should go at least 51/49.

Whether it’s your team and their manager, the manager can’t want the team to succeed more than the team actually wants it for themselves. It’s not scalable for the coach (manager) to run on the field every play to win the game for the salespeople.

What about sales ops processes and systems? What about the tools available to the sales team and the ones that are classified as sales enablement?

In a reversal of philosophy, I believe the sales ops processes should go 90, the team should only have to go 10.

Why Do We Need Salespeople?

Let’s start where it matters – what is the point of having salespeople?

I know many owners question the need and desire to have salespeople. They are hard to manage, tough to deal with, always want more money (potentially for doing less work and closing less deals), and are very resistant to change.

Of course, that is a generalization. Of course, there are salespeople who don’t check those boxes.

However, having worked with a lot of teams in a lot of industries, that generalization isn’t completely wrong or unfair.

So if there is even a small part of that which is accurate, why would we even mess with the messiness of having salespeople? Of needing to employ and manage humans?

The Human Element in Sales

We need them. That’s why.

Even in 2025, AI and technology has not successfully replicated the requirements of sales – which is about helping a human (prospect/customer) make the right decision and move outside of their comfort zone to buy something new.

It still takes your human (salesperson) to persuade that other human. It’s why I say all the time that its not B2B, B2C, Retail, SaaS, etc. – it’s H2H.

Sure, people can buy something online or even in a store without speaking to someone. But if it’s a considered purchase where there are options and decisions to be considered – it still takes a human being involved.

That means ultimately your human (salesperson) has one job, and one job only – persuade the right prospective humans to buy.

Minimizing Distractions for Salespeople

Everything outside of that mission, task, focus is a distraction that takes away from their highest and best use.

Imagine if we had a surgeon who had to prep the room, prep the patient, schedule the surgery and meetings, and do all the parts of the surgery themselves. Nope – they show up for the surgery and do what they do best. Then they take off their gown, gloves, and walk away to get cleaned up and move on to the next thing.

Your goal as a sales ops leader is to support the team with systems and processes that allow them to focus on the one thing you need them for. The human part.

It would be amazing if they could show up, talk to people, and make sales happen. Of course, there is more that they (and any professional) need to do before, during, and after the sales conversation. But your goal is to minimize all that.

Every hour that your salespeople aren’t selling or doing sales-related activities, they aren’t moving revenue forward.

The Ultimate Goal of Sales Ops

What processes can you put in place that go 90 percent of the way, where the salesperson can do the last 10 percent? An example would be building an email campaign that runs automatically, and when the right people reply, the salesperson gets involved in getting that person from email to phone call.

Another example would be your CRM serving up people for the salesperson to call – leads or anyone in the sales pipeline flow – with all the backstory, research, data, intel needed for them to review it then take action.

What can you put into place that takes away as much distraction and effort from your sales team such that they can focus on the one thing you need to focus on – other humans?