---
title: "Sales Operations: Definition and Examples"
description: "Sales operations is the team that runs the processes, data, tools and planning behind a sales organization, including the CRM, territories, quotas..."
path: /glossary/sales-operations
family: glossary
updated: 2026-10-17
html: /glossary/sales-operations
sources:
  - "https://www.salesforce.com/sales/team-productivity/what-is-sales-operations/"
  - "https://www.forrester.com/blogs/whats-your-sales-operations-type/"
facts:
  term: "Sales operations"
  also_called: "sales ops, SalesOps, sales operations team"
  category: "Sales"
---

# Sales operations

Sales operations is the team that runs the processes, data, tools and planning behind a sales organization, including the CRM, territories, quotas, forecasting, compensation and reporting, so sellers spend more of their time selling.

## What Is Sales Operations?

**In short:** Typical responsibilities: CRM administration and data quality, lead routing, territory and quota design, commission plans, forecasting, pipeline reporting and buying and running sales tools.

In smaller companies one person does all of it; in larger ones it splits into analytics, systems and planning.

Sales ops is different from sales enablement and RevOps. Enablement trains people and builds content; sales ops builds the system they work in. RevOps extends the same idea across marketing and customer success.

## Sales Operations Example

Example: a sales ops manager finds that SDRs spend 6 hours a week building lists. They set up a shared target account list per territory with automatic enrichment, which gives each SDR most of a day back for outreach every week.

## Sales Operations in Practice

In outbound, sales ops often owns the plumbing: sending domains and mailboxes, the sequencing tool, how contacts sync to the CRM, how meetings are credited to SDRs and the reports that show cost per meeting. When deliverability drops or meetings stop being logged, sales ops is usually the team that fixes it.

## FAQ

### What does a sales operations manager do?

They run the CRM and sales tools, design territories and quotas, build forecasts and reports, manage commission plans and remove admin work from sellers.

### What is the difference between sales ops and RevOps?

Sales ops serves the sales team. RevOps covers marketing, sales and customer success together, with shared systems and definitions across the whole revenue cycle.

### What is the difference between sales operations and sales management?

Sales management leads people: hiring, coaching and hitting targets. Sales operations runs the processes, systems and data that let those people sell efficiently.

### What is the difference between sales ops and sales enablement?

Sales ops runs systems, territories and data. Sales enablement equips reps with content, training and coaching.

## Do this in Ken

### Do This in Ken

Delivery handles the sending setup: mailboxes, warmup and the DNS records each domain needs, so sales ops is not configuring every new domain by hand.

- Link: [Do This in Ken](/features)

## Related

- [GTM Glossary](/glossary): Every GTM term, grouped by topic.
- [RevOps (revenue operations)](/glossary/revops)
- [Sales enablement](/glossary/sales-enablement)
- [CRM](/glossary/crm)
- [Sales pipeline](/glossary/sales-pipeline)
- [Lead scoring](/glossary/lead-scoring)
- [Ken features](/features)

## Sources

| Source | URL | Checked |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Salesforce: What is sales operations | https://www.salesforce.com/sales/team-productivity/what-is-sales-operations/ | 2026-10-17 |
| Forrester: What's your sales operations type | https://www.forrester.com/blogs/whats-your-sales-operations-type/ | 2026-10-17 |

## Changelog

- 2026-10-17: Page published.