Utilizing Data For Effective Sales Leadership with the Head of Sales Operations & Enablement of Carousell

In this episode of the Selling in Asia podcast, Tom Abbott sits down with Vishal Salunkhe, Head of Sales Operations & Enablement of Carousell, to discuss utilizing data insights for effective sales leadership. Vishal is a seasoned Sales Operations Leader and expert of Business Operations & Commercial Effectiveness traversing across several industries; Software & IT services, eCommerce & Shipping. 

Embracing A Data-Focused Mindset For Effective Sales Leadership

Collecting, understanding, and analyzing your data for often-overlooked insights are necessary for effective sales leadership.

Utilizing data means that you derive value from various sales KPIs: conversion rates, call rates, win rates, marketing collateral usage, average deal size, sales cycle length, and deal response time.

These data points are fundamental for any sales team to know which factors impact the success rate, help advance sales, deliver the right content and when, and what changes will improve performance.

The ability to make informed decisions is essential for a sucessful sales strategy, so by adopting a data-focused approach you’ll benefit from:

  1. Improved Lead Generation
  2. Improved Customer Lifetime Value
  3. Fostering Business-Wide Development

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Predictive Preemption Vs. Reactive Support

Teamwork is obviously vital for Sales Operations in terms of compatibility between your Sales Leader and Sales Team, which involves developing of chemistry to align yourselves. So, what does this mean for you in terms of Predictive Preemption?

Sales operations have continued to shift from being Reactive to Proactive and now need to move towards Predictive.

Well, what worked for you before in one role in terms of insights, reports, materials, or decisions will never be the same with your next role because every single leader is different- It’s very subjective in terms of where you are and what you’re trying to achieve.

So instead of just talking about your data pipeline, sales, productivity metrics, and so on – You should be looking at the market when completing a planning session.

Sales Operations Vs. Sales Enablement in Effective Sales Leadership

Sales Operations is undoubtedly a more recognized function than Sales Enablement, so what exactly is the difference? To define it, Sales Operations focuses on refining your sales process, creating efficiency through data, tools, and an optimized workflow.

Sales Enablement, however, is the focus of supporting and leading your team through learning, training, and coaching sessions to provide them with the necessary skills to achieve targets.

It’s really around how can we provide our sales team with the tools, resources, learning, and everything they need to enable them to win deals.

Sales Operations and Sales Enablement are required to work in tandem to ensure your Sales Team has the tools and resources they need to sell and communicate the business’s state. Sales Ops are responsible for driving a consistent stream of information to the Sales Enablement team to inform their priorities around training or product needs.

However, the Sales Enablement team also work intimately with Sales Ops on any new overhead work to ensure it meets company needs.

Visual Insights Vs. Data Interpretation

Visual insights are simply data represented in a visual context by making explicit the trends and patterns clear. Usually, in charts, tables, line graphs, and column charts, there is also a rise of 3D representations.

On the other hand, Data Interpretation is identifying or discovering the trends and patterns in the data. So what is the difference between insights and analytics? And why is it important?

We need to continuously adapt our product and to listen to our consumers.

An analysis is a process of looking at something in close detail and individual components to learn new perspectives.

Comparatively, Insights are about discovering an element that isn’t immediately obvious. The two terms are closely linked because the analysis is what you conduct to gain insight in many contexts.

Unfortunately, a lack of insight directly results in a lack of engagement. Considering that Businesses often fail to leverage the data at their disposal, they miss out on the resulting pearls of information. 

The insights delivered through data and analytics allow Businesses to understand their customers intimately and empower them to create meaningful engagement opportunities.

Introducing Carousell

Carousell is one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing classified marketplaces operating across markets in Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Australia, Canada, and India.

Carousell has a diverse marketplace of brands with a product range to match; cars, property, jobs, lifestyle, gadgets, and fashion accessories. Their mission? “To inspire every person in the world to start selling and buying.”

Founded in 2012, Carousell focuses on giving users the tools to solve their problems, whether merely decluttering or earning an additional side income.

They genuinely believe that technology is a crucial enabler to solve significant issues on a large scale. They’re now focusing on crafting the most seamless user experience for people to sell and buy.

More About Vishal Salunkhe

Vishals extensive career includes leading APAC Operations for Red Hat’s Services Business, APAC Sales Programs Operations for Oracle ODP, Pan India Sales Operations at Red Hat. Vishal has also excelled in other essential operational roles, including Service Improvement Lead Maersk and Sales Operations roles at IBM & Tech Mahindra. 

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