The highest-leverage hire most revenue leaders get wrong
Ask a VP of Sales to name the hire that had the most impact on their team's performance, and the answer is rarely a rep. It is usually their first sales ops person. The one who turned a messy CRM into a reliable system. The one who built the forecast model that actually predicted revenue. The one who freed the VP from spending half their week pulling reports and fixing data.
And yet, the first sales ops hire is also one of the most commonly botched. Companies hire too junior. They hire a CRM admin when they need a strategist. They hire a former rep when they need an analyst. They put the role under the wrong leader or give it a mandate with no authority.
This guide covers when to make the hire, what roles exist in a mature sales ops team, how to structure the function at every stage, and the decisions that separate high-performing sales ops teams from ones that just maintain the CRM.
When to make your first sales ops hire
The right time to hire sales ops is before you desperately need it. In practice, most companies wait too long. Here are the signals that the time has come:
Your CRM is unreliable. Reps distrust the data. Managers build their own shadow spreadsheets. Your pipeline report says one thing; reality says another. When the system of record is not trusted, every downstream decision is compromised.
Forecasting is guesswork. The VP of Sales forecasts by gut feel: talking to reps, reading deal notes, and making a subjective call. There is no methodology, no historical benchmarking, and no data-driven model. Forecasts miss by 30%+ consistently.
Reps spend more time on admin than selling. If your reps are spending 25-40% of their time on data entry, report building, territory lookups, and manual processes, you are paying sales compensation for operational work. That is a direct hit to productivity and morale.
The VP of Sales is the de facto ops person. When the revenue leader spends 50% or more of their time on operational tasks (building reports, managing the CRM, designing territories, calculating commissions), they are not doing the strategic work you hired them for. This is the most common trigger and the clearest signal.
You have 15-25 reps. This is the range where the operational burden exceeds what a sales leader can absorb as a side task. Below 15 reps, an organized VP of Sales can often manage. Above 25, operating without dedicated ops creates significant drag.
The cost of waiting too long is real. Every quarter without sales ops means another quarter of unreliable forecasts, unoptimized processes, and reps wasting time on tasks that do not generate revenue.
Sales operations roles explained
A mature sales ops team includes several distinct roles, each with a different skill set and scope. Understanding these roles helps you hire the right person at the right level for your stage.
Sales Operations Coordinator / Representative
Level: Entry-level to junior
Scope: Tactical execution and support
Typical responsibilities:
- CRM data entry and cleanup
- Report generation from existing dashboards
- Basic workflow and automation maintenance
- User account setup and permission management
- Commission data collection and validation
- Ad hoc data pulls for managers
Skills required: CRM fluency, attention to detail, basic Excel/Sheets proficiency, comfort with repetitive tasks
When to hire: When your existing ops person or manager needs tactical support and the volume of routine operational tasks justifies a dedicated resource.
Sales Operations Analyst
Level: Mid-level
Scope: Data analysis, reporting, and process documentation
Typical responsibilities:
- Build and maintain dashboards and reports
- Analyze pipeline, conversion, and performance data to identify trends
- Create and maintain process documentation
- Develop and refine the forecasting model
- Conduct territory and quota analysis
- Support annual planning with data and modeling
Skills required: SQL or equivalent data querying skills, advanced Excel/Sheets, experience with BI tools (Tableau, Looker, Power BI), statistical literacy, ability to translate data into recommendations, clear written communication
When to hire: When you need someone who can go beyond pulling reports to actually analyzing data and surfacing insights. This is often the right profile for a first sales ops hire at a company with 20-40 reps.
Sales Operations Manager
Level: Senior individual contributor or people manager
Scope: Process ownership, technology decisions, team leadership
Typical responsibilities:
- Own end-to-end sales processes (lead-to-close, territory management, forecasting cadence)
- Evaluate, select, and implement sales technology
- Define and enforce CRM standards and data governance policies
- Manage relationships with sales leadership and cross-functional stakeholders
- Lead quarterly and annual planning processes
- Build and manage a small ops team (1-3 direct reports)
Skills required: Salesforce or CRM administration at an advanced level, project management, stakeholder communication, vendor management, process design, experience managing technical individual contributors
When to hire: When you need someone to own the sales ops function, not just execute tasks within it. This is the right first hire for a company with 30-60 reps that has significant process and technology complexity.
Director / VP of Sales Operations
Level: Executive or senior leader
Scope: Strategy, cross-functional alignment, executive partnership
Typical responsibilities:
- Set the sales ops strategy and roadmap
- Partner with the CRO on GTM planning, territory design, and quota methodology
- Own the sales technology budget and stack strategy
- Drive cross-functional initiatives (pricing changes, new product launches, market expansion)
- Build and lead a team of 5-15+ across analytics, systems, process, and enablement
- Represent operations in executive and board-level discussions
Skills required: Executive communication, strategic planning, financial modeling, organizational design, deep understanding of sales motions and GTM strategy, experience building and scaling teams
When to hire: When sales ops is a strategic function, not just a support function. Typically at 75+ reps or when the company's operational complexity demands senior leadership.
Team structure by company stage
Early stage: under 20 reps
Team size: 1 generalist
Profile: A senior analyst or junior manager who can do everything. This person will build reports in the morning, fix a CRM automation in the afternoon, and model next quarter's territories in the evening. They need to be comfortable with ambiguity and able to context-switch constantly.
What to prioritize: CRM reliability, basic reporting, a functional forecasting process, and rep productivity improvements. Do not try to build a world-class analytics practice at this stage. Build the foundation.
Ratio: Roughly 1 ops person per 15-20 reps at this stage.
Growth stage: 20-75 reps
Team size: 2-4 specialists
Typical structure:
- Sales Ops Manager (team lead, process owner)
- CRM Administrator (dedicated to system configuration, integrations, and data quality)
- Sales Analyst (reporting, dashboard building, ad hoc analysis)
- Optional: Deal Desk / Process Specialist (if you have CPQ complexity, approval workflows, or non-standard deal structures)
What to prioritize: Forecast methodology, territory optimization, tool stack consolidation, data governance, and rep ramp efficiency. This is the stage where the foundation you built early either scales or cracks.
Ratio: Roughly 1 ops person per 15-25 reps, depending on complexity.
Enterprise: 75+ reps
Team size: 5-15+, organized into functional sub-teams
Typical structure:
- VP/Director of Sales Operations (strategy and executive partnership)
- Analytics team (2-4 analysts focused on pipeline analytics, performance analysis, and planning)
- Systems team (2-3 administrators and engineers managing CRM, integrations, and the tech stack)
- Process and enablement team (1-3 people owning sales process design, change management, and training)
- Deal desk (1-3 people handling pricing approvals, contract reviews, and non-standard deals)
What to prioritize: Operational efficiency at scale, cross-functional alignment, tool ROI measurement, advanced analytics (predictive forecasting, propensity models), and global/multi-segment coordination.
Ratio: Roughly 1 ops person per 20-30 reps at this stage, as specialization and tooling automation create leverage.
The skills that matter most
Analytical thinking
This is non-negotiable for every sales ops role above coordinator level. The ability to take a business question ("Why did pipeline drop 20% last quarter?"), translate it into a data question, run the analysis, and present a clear answer with recommended actions. Specific skills include SQL, advanced Excel/Sheets, and familiarity with at least one BI tool.
Systems design and CRM expertise
Sales ops people live in the CRM. They need to understand not just how to configure fields and workflows, but how to design systems that scale. A good sales ops hire thinks about data architecture, not just data entry. They ask: "If we build it this way, what breaks when we add a new product line next year?"
Salesforce administration skills remain the most in-demand, but HubSpot expertise is increasingly valuable as more mid-market companies adopt it.
Stakeholder management and communication
Sales ops sits between sales leadership (who wants results yesterday), reps (who want less admin work), marketing (who wants attribution credit), finance (who wants accurate forecasts), and IT (who wants governance). The ability to manage competing priorities, communicate trade-offs clearly, and build trust across functions is what separates good ops people from great ones.
Process optimization mindset
The best sales ops people are obsessed with how things work, not just whether they work. They document processes, identify bottlenecks, design improvements, measure the impact, and iterate. They think in systems, not tasks.
Why "former rep" is not always the right hire
There is a persistent belief that the best sales ops people are former sales reps who "understand the field." This is sometimes true. A former rep brings credibility with the sales team and an intuitive understanding of the selling experience.
But the skills that make a great rep (relationship building, persuasion, resilience, competitive drive) are different from the skills that make a great ops person (analytical thinking, systems design, process orientation, detail management). Many former reps struggle with the patience and precision that ops work demands.
The best approach: hire for analytical and operational skills first. Sales context can be learned. Analytical rigor cannot be faked.
Where should sales ops report?
The reporting structure for sales ops is one of the most debated org design questions in B2B. There are three common models, each with trade-offs.
Under the CRO
Best for: Strategic alignment across the full revenue organization
When sales ops reports to the CRO, it has proximity to the executive most responsible for revenue outcomes. The CRO can ensure that ops priorities align with the overall GTM strategy, not just sales-specific needs. This structure also creates a natural path toward revenue operations, since the CRO typically oversees sales, marketing partnerships, and CS.
Risk: If the CRO is a sales-background leader who sees ops as a support function, the team may lack strategic empowerment.
Under the VP of Sales
Best for: Sales-specific focus and execution speed
When sales ops reports to the VP of Sales, priorities are clear: make the sales team more productive. There is less cross-functional noise, and the ops team can focus deeply on sales process, territory design, and rep productivity.
Risk: Sales ops becomes insular. It optimizes for sales at the expense of cross-functional alignment. Marketing ops and CS ops develop independently, creating data silos and process gaps.
Under the COO or CFO
Best for: Operational discipline and financial rigor
Some companies place sales ops under a COO or CFO to ensure operational and financial rigor. This structure works well when the company prioritizes efficiency, cost management, and process standardization.
Risk: Distance from the sales team. Ops decisions made without sufficient sales context can create friction and reduce adoption.
The trend
The industry is moving toward CRO reporting and, increasingly, toward unified RevOps under a VP or SVP of Revenue Operations. According to LinkedIn data, RevOps and revenue operations titles have grown over 300% in the past five years. The direction is clear, even if every company is not there yet.
Common hiring mistakes
Hiring too junior for the first role
Your first sales ops hire will define how the function operates. A junior coordinator can maintain an existing system, but they cannot design one. If your CRM is a mess, your forecasting is nonexistent, and your processes are undocumented, you need someone with the experience and judgment to build from the ground up. Hire at the manager or senior analyst level for your first ops role. You can add junior support once the foundation is in place.
Hiring a tool admin when you need a strategist
If your job description focuses on "Salesforce administration" and "report building," you will attract operators, not strategists. The first sales ops hire should spend 30-40% of their time on strategic work: process design, planning, cross-functional alignment. If the role is 100% tactical, you will burn out your hire and miss the strategic impact ops can deliver.
Not giving sales ops a seat at the leadership table
Sales ops should attend pipeline reviews, QBRs, planning sessions, and leadership meetings. Not as a note-taker, but as a contributor. If ops only learns about strategic decisions after they are made, they cannot design processes and systems to support those decisions. The most effective sales ops leaders are true partners to the VP of Sales, not support staff.
Expecting ops to fix a culture problem
If reps do not update the CRM because leadership does not hold them accountable, that is not a sales ops problem. It is a management problem. Sales ops can build the systems, create the processes, and make compliance easy. But they cannot enforce adoption without leadership backing. Hire ops with the expectation that leadership will support the changes ops recommends.
Hiring based on tool experience alone
A candidate who knows Salesforce deeply but cannot think critically about process design will build a technically sophisticated system that does not solve business problems. Prioritize analytical and strategic skills. Tool expertise is important but learnable.
Building the job description
A strong sales ops job description should include these elements:
Clear scope definition. Is this a CRM-focused role, an analytics role, a process design role, or a generalist role? Be explicit. "Sales ops" means different things at different companies, and ambiguity attracts the wrong candidates.
Strategic responsibilities, not just tactical ones. Include language about process improvement, cross-functional partnership, and operational strategy. If the JD reads like a task list, you will attract task-oriented people.
Specific tools and skills. Name the CRM, BI tools, and technical skills you need. "Salesforce experience required" is better than "CRM experience preferred." "SQL required" filters differently than "analytical skills preferred."
Business context. Describe the sales team size, the selling motion, and the biggest operational challenges. Candidates who understand your context self-select more effectively.
Success metrics. What does success look like in the first 90 days? First year? The best candidates want to know how they will be measured, and vague JDs suggest the company has not thought this through.
Reporting structure and cross-functional relationships. Who does the role report to? Who are the key stakeholders? What meetings will they attend? This signals how much influence the role carries.
Growth path. Especially for your first hire: where does this role go? Will they build a team? Evolve into a RevOps leader? The best ops people think about their trajectory, and showing a path helps you compete for talent.
The compounding returns of getting this right
Sales operations is one of the few functions where the return on investment compounds over time. A good first hire builds a reliable CRM, which enables accurate forecasting, which builds leadership trust, which earns the ops function more influence, which leads to better process design, which makes reps more productive, which drives more revenue.
The inverse is also true. A bad first hire (or no hire at all) creates a negative cycle: unreliable data, bad forecasts, eroded trust, and reps who learn to work around the system instead of through it.
The decision about when to hire, who to hire, and how to structure the team is not just an HR exercise. It is a revenue decision.
If you are building your sales operations function and need the tooling infrastructure to support it, RevenueTools provides the operational foundation that helps sales ops teams deliver from day one.