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Mollie Bodensteiner

AMA: SVP of Operations, Mollie Bodensteiner on Sales Operations

June 10 @ 10:00AM PT

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  1. What's the most counterintuitive lesson you've learned in sales operations?

    Mollie Bodensteiner
    Mollie Bodensteiner

    Engine SVP of Operations | Formerly Engine, Sound, Deel, Marketo, Syncari • Jun 10

    Speed kills more than it helps. 

    The instinct in ops is to move fast. Close the ticket, ship the report, fix the thing. But the fastest answer to the wrong question just creates a more expensive problem downstream. 

    I've learned to slow down at the front end. Define what's actually broken before you start building. Most "urgent" requests are symptoms. The disease is usually upstream.
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  2. How do you prioritize between short-term sales support needs and long-term operational infrastructure?

    Mollie Bodensteiner
    Mollie Bodensteiner

    Engine SVP of Operations | Formerly Engine, Sound, Deel, Marketo, Syncari • Jun 10

    I make the cost of the short-term visible. Every one-off request that comes through my team, I want to know if we're going to touch it again in 30, 60. 90+ days. If yes, it's not a request. It's a gap we're choosing not to close.

    I put that in front of leadership explicitly. Not to say no to the urgent thing, but to make sure we're not confusing responsiveness with progress. A responsive ops team that never builds anything is just an expensive help desk.
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  3. What's one metric most sales teams track that you think is overrated and what should they track instead?

    Mollie Bodensteiner
    Mollie Bodensteiner

    Engine SVP of Operations | Formerly Engine, Sound, Deel, Marketo, Syncari • Jun 10

    Activity metrics. Calls made, emails sent, sequences enrolled. All of it. 

    It measures motion, not momentum. What I actually want to know: what's the quality-to-pipeline conversion rate on rep-sourced opportunities, and how does it trend by segment? That tells me whether a rep is working the right accounts the right way, not just whether they showed up to the keyboard.

    Activity is directional (still worth measuring) but do not stop with just the volume. 
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  4. What skills do you hire for in a sales ops analyst that most people overlook?

    Mollie Bodensteiner
    Mollie Bodensteiner

    Engine SVP of Operations | Formerly Engine, Sound, Deel, Marketo, Syncari • Jun 10

    Intellectual courage. I can teach someone Salesforce, systems, etc. I can't teach the courage and confidence they need them to tell a VP that the data doesn't support their narrative. 

    The team members that provide the most value in my org are the ones who push back early, flag the gap nobody wants to see, and ask the uncomfortable clarifying question before they start building. Curiosity is table stakes. Courage is the differentiator.
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  5. How do you keep Sales reps from seeing Ops as "the process police"?

    Mollie Bodensteiner
    Mollie Bodensteiner

    Engine SVP of Operations | Formerly Engine, Sound, Deel, Marketo, Syncari • Jun 10

    Change what you optimize for. Most ops teams measure compliance. Are reps following the process? 

    I measure friction. Where is the process slowing a rep down, and is that slowdown earning anything in return? When reps see you auditing the system on their behalf instead of auditing them, the dynamic shifts. You're not enforcing. You're clearing the path.
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