Why SaaS Companies Need Sales Ops: SmartHR's Keisuke Kudo Explains

SmartHR Sales Planning lead Keisuke Kudo breaks down how he built a three-function Ops team and why it must own strategy, not just tooling.

• SmartHR’s Sales Ops covers three functions: Operations (process + tools), Analytics (data), and Enablement (training + execution); Kudo treats them as a single PDCA cycle.
• Ops exists to solve high-importance, low-urgency problems that sales managers deprioritize under short-term quota pressure.
• SmartHR recently moved the Operations sub-function out of Sales Planning into a cross-business Ops team because every sales-process fix required constant coordination with Inside Sales and CS anyway.
• For analytics, Kudo favors fast 2-3 day analyses that back up gut instincts over months-long BI projects; speed of decision support matters more than statistical rigor.
• Concrete wins: standardized Salesforce flows for enterprise group-company assignment, rebuilt multi-plan pricing data pipeline for clean revenue rollups, and a new quantitative sales-skill scoring system replacing purely subjective evaluations.
• Best Sales Ops hire is an internal sales convert — someone who wants to double the whole team’s number rather than their own quota; hiring externally slows ramp significantly.
• To decide if you need Ops: check how granularly you can break down your funnel and whether win rates and lead times are actually being measured; if not, start there immediately.
• Kudo renamed the team from ‘Sales Ops’ to ‘Sales Planning’ to escape the ‘tool admin’ perception and signal upstream strategic ownership.

2025-06-26 · Watch on YouTube