Head of Business Operations: Marvin Varnphruk of StreamSets
Marvin Varnphruk joined the recent podcast of Sales Operation Demystified and shared his journey and experience in sales operations. Check out all the other episodes of Sales Operations Demystified here.
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The journey into sales operations
After graduating, Marvin aimed to get into consultancy and landed a role in a litigation consulting firm. Here, he was responsible for analyzing large amounts of data, using SAS software – an alternative to SQL.
Further along his career, he moved on to Booz Allen Hamilton. Here, his main project was managing a quarter-billion-dollar budget for NASA Ames Research Center. He also created budget models to forecast shortfalls and trained the NASA team regarding data automation.
From there, his perspectives towards sales operation changed and he decided to pursue his career around sales.
Why sales operations?
When asked the reason for choosing sales operations as a career line, Marvin said that sales operations play a vital role in any company. He further explained that as a consultant, you are never specializing in any role but rather working as a generalist.
However, his aim was to parachute into any task, complete it, solve it, and move on to another set of projects. With sales operations, he was able to achieve the same.
After working on various sales ops role at Couchbase and Autodesk Construction Solutions, Marvin is currently working as the Head of Sales Operation at StreamSets.
Building connectivity with Salesforce
Marvin Varnphruk is a certified Salesforce admin and works closely with the leadership at StreamSets to improve the processes as well as the productivity of their B2B enterprises.
His major contribution at StreamSets with Salesforce was to replicate a very expensive commission software using the G-connector. He finds G-connector as the best tool available and was able to help the problems of commission without financial restrictions.
He also streamlined the communication issues of the sales team by implementing a system in Salesforce CPQ that works with the readily available Playbooks at the finance department. This made the sales team more liable for their work, while also enhanced transparency amongst the teams.
Above all, the integration of technology eliminated the manual clutter from the sales operations department.
The forecasting process at StreamSets
The forecasting process is given a significant emphasis on StreamSets. The team members get together every week to analyze each deal they have in the pipeline. These are categorized into three stages:
- High risk
- At gut
- Low risk
The team maps out the stage each sales rep is in via Salesforce to enhance the sales process.
The #1 sales metric for Marvin – Ramp time
The predominant metric for every sales rep remains to be Sales.
However, Marvin considers the “Ramp Time” as an important factor to analyze the sales prospect. It helps them determine how long it would take the person to come in and ramp in the deal. Eventually, it also shows them how much revenue to expect from a specific member of the sales team.
When looking at STR – retail through sales – Marvin finds the talk time between the sales rep and the prospect as the most important unit of analyzing the sales.
Marvin’s biggest influencer:
Ross Collinson – Product Manager at Autodesk
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