AMA: Knowledge Vortex Salesforce Functional Analyst, Bridget Hudacs on Finance / Revenue Ops Alignment

If you are doing an experiment, then you should have a hypothesis that you are testing. To justify budget for this experiment, you need to share your hypothesis and test method with Finance in the form of a business plan. Example: Business objective: Increase sales of Widgets by $10,000 over Jan - Mar 2025 through the use of influencer marketing. Background: Sales of Widgets for Jan - Mar 2024 were $100,000. Target market = Identified Persona, who gravitates toward Influencer as an expert in the ...Read More

The benefit of a deal desk is having a team focused on formalizing custom agreements with customers that are outside of standard discounting. Ideally, these deal desk deals should be large, move-the-needle/shore-up-the-bottom-line agreements. Deal Desk can minimize issues with large/custom agreements receiving incorrect discounting or service levels. How do you keep deal desk from slowing deals down? Communication. From initial discovery, Sales should be working with the Deal Desk team to discus ...Read More

To improve pipeline accuracy, I first look at the process related to sales forecasting: How much of the process is (or can be) assigned to objective activities (ie contract signing, request for quote etc)? How well are your salespeople trained on the non-automated aspects of pipeline and forecasting? Are there aspects of your sales comp plan that are tied to pipeline? Who is accountable for the accuracy of the pipeline? Does that person have the right tools/authority to coach/correct contributor ...Read More

In my experience, Finance requesting the additional work of monitoring Sales is more indicative of a need for understanding than control. Look into the root cause(s) of why the discounts are being broadly applied from the sales side: Is it a pricing discrepancy with the market? Is it a training issue with the reps? Is it an outcome of how comp plans or sales quotas are structured? Is it a sales strategy? (ie having a List Price, which no one ever actually pays) Once you understand the background ...Read More

Show them the money: What are current expenses with your existing tech stack? What are the issues with the current tech stack? How do those issues impact the bottom line? (Ideally this is a quantitative answer, but can be qualitative) If you're looking to add to the tech stack, what are the gaps that you're addressing? Why can't they be filled with existing technology? If you're looking to streamline the tech stack, are the changes cost-saving or cost-neutral? What are the additional benefits th ...Read More

To help Finance understand the role of SDRs, you need to explain the role in a way that demonstrates anticipated cost savings and ROI based on work distribution, comp plan(s) and increased sales. Here are some specific questions and a suggested approach to demonstrating your cost savings and ROI: Why do you need to add headcount to the sales organization? Identify the limits/constraints of an AE-only model relative to Total Available Market (TAM) for your business How are these limits/constraint ...Read More