Progression in a Sales Ops Role with Susan Metz, Senior Manager, Sales Operations at Turnitin

In this episode of Sales Ops Demystified, Tom Hunt is joined by Susan Metz, Senior Manager, Sales Operations at Turnitin. They discuss why a salesperson might transition into a sales ops role, the lessons she learned during her career in sales ops, and how TurnItIn handles acquisitions from a Sales Ops perspective.

• Susan’s Linkedin
• Turnitin Website

Transition into a Sales Ops role

A Salesforce Admin certification is a great way for busy salespeople to transition to a less hectic and more peaceful lifestyle in sales ops. This is particularly useful for those who wish to work remotely and want to avoid traveling. You may not become a Sales Ops manager right away, but a transition to sales ops that begins in an analyst role will help solidify your work experience.

Susan had previously traveled as a Google Apps trainer and Salesperson, but it became more difficult to do after having two children. She completed her Salesforce Admin certification and Pardot certification with hopes to move into a calmer lifestyle with remote work.

Turnitin sales team structure

Turnitin has close to 250 people in the sales group across eight different teams: six of them being regional sales teams and two being product-focused sales teams. 

They are supported by ten sales ops people in a globally distributed remote team. 

Susan’s observations in her Sales Ops career 

Over her career, Susan has realized the core difference between sales enablement and sales ops. She has helped her team at Turnitin to also understand this difference. 

It’s important to decide where you want the Revenue Operations team to function. They could work from a sales perspective, a finance perspective, a customer success perspective, or an IT perspective.   While sales is a natural home for revenue ops, its partnerships with other teams are also crucial.

Merging several Salesforce instances after major acquisitions

Turnitin has had three major acquisitions over the past eighteen months. This has resulted in the need to merge and integrate the sales ops teams. 

The biggest challenge is to ensure the teams can still access their data and that work doesn’t stop during the transition. A secondary but major challenge is to create a singular Salesforce instance for additional sales processes, record types, languages, and currencies. 

It’s a fun and interesting transition, but the team must ensure they follow timelines.

Major focus of Turnitin Sales Ops team in 2021 

They just migrated their customer-facing and internal collateral to HighSpot, which will also function as their Sales LMS for training and product certification. They spent quite a bit of time planning their architecture which helps them focus on building the excitement for the product.

Going forward, they will have to go through many data cleanup tasks as they integrate several instances. Their sales process will also change in this period.  

Recommended episodes 

• The Role of Sales Ops in Acquisitions with Chris Fezza of AdminWithin
• Consultant – Sales Operations and Sales Enablement: Ed Staten
• The Six Pillars of Revenue Operations with Rhys Williams, VP Revenue Operations at Convercent

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