What Is The Difference Between Sales Enablement And Sales Operations?

By Matt Ellis, Seismic

The world of sales and marketing encompasses a lot of different positions. To simply say you are in marketing or sales doesn’t do nearly enough to accurately convey what you actually do in your day-to-day. And to outsiders who aren’t familiar, the nuances of different positions can be lost on them. One of the biggest questions we see being asked nowadays is ‘what is the difference between sales enablement and sales operations?”

For those of you who stay well-versed in sales enablement trends and know all there is to know about the world of sales and marketing, that might seem like a simple question. However, not everyone is that up-to-date on the latest trends or the minute details of different terms. Let’s dig into the question and answer what the difference is between sales enablement and sales operations.

What is Sales Operations?

To begin to understand the answer the question we need to discuss the central tenets of the two terms at the heart of the question.

For the purposes of this question, consider sales operations as the more technical activities associated with day-to-day sales efforts. For instance, maintaining a CRM system; closely monitoring data as it relates to opportunities, leads, and won/lost deals; reporting on those numbers; managing the tech stack of the sales organization, and much more.