VP/Director of Sales Operations

Overview

You build and run the sales operations function at Path Robotics—a 185-person company selling AI-powered welding cells. You own Salesforce, forecasting models, territory design, comp plans, and all GTM reporting. You work closely with the CRO to turn early sales traction into a predictable, scalable motion.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Series B/C stage (185 employees, building GTM infrastructure)

Size: 185 employees

Growth: Running SKOs, investing in process and systems, hiring across sales and CS

Market Position: Early-stage GTM in a traditional manufacturing market—processes are still being defined

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 70% Outbound - AEs and possibly SDRs prospecting into target manufacturers
• 20% Inbound - Some word-of-mouth and conference leads
• 10% Partners - Manufacturing consultants, system integrators

SDR/AE Structure: Small team (5-10 sellers), likely still evolving structure

SE Support: Sales Engineers handle technical demos—you manage how they log activity and track POC status

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Traditional manual welding, other robotic welding providers, DIY automation

How They Differentiate: AI-driven adaptability, RaaS pricing model

Your Role in Competitive Positioning: You build win/loss tracking, competitive battle cards, and help sales leaders understand why deals are won or lost

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

CRM/Systems (30%) | Forecasting/Reporting (25%) | Process Design (20%) | Comp/Territories (15%) | Ad-hoc Analysis (10%)

Key Activities

• Salesforce Administration: You configure fields, workflows, dashboards, and integrations. The CRM is messy because the team has been moving fast—you clean it up and enforce data hygiene.
• Building the Forecast Model: You create a pipeline model that predicts bookings 2-3 quarters out. You train AEs on stage definitions and forecast categories. You run weekly forecast calls and reconcile pipeline with finance.
• Territory and Quota Planning: You design territory assignments (by industry vertical, geography, account size). You model quotas and comp plans with finance and the CRO.
• Reporting and Dashboards: You build executive dashboards showing pipeline health, win rates, sales velocity, rep performance. You prepare board slides and QBR decks.
• Process Optimization: You map the sales process from lead to close. You identify bottlenecks (deals stuck in legal, POCs taking too long) and work cross-functionally to fix them.
• Enablement Support: You identify training gaps based on data (low demo-to-proposal conversion, inconsistent discovery quality) and work with enablement or sales leaders to address them.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• The sales team hasn't had strong ops support before. Data is inconsistent—accounts aren't properly linked, stages aren't updated, activities aren't logged. You spend months cleaning up years of bad hygiene.
• Forecasting is hard when deals slip constantly. Manufacturing buyers ghost for weeks, legal reviews take forever, budget approval cycles are unpredictable. Your model needs to account for 30-40% of pipeline slipping every quarter.
• You're a team of one or two. You're doing everything—CRM admin, analytics, comp planning, vendor management. You're constantly triaging what's urgent vs. what's important.
• Sales leaders want custom reports constantly. "Can you show me win rate by industry?" "How many demos did each rep do last month?" "What's our average time in each stage?" You become the bottleneck if you don't teach people to self-serve.
• Cross-functional dependencies slow you down. You need engineering to build integrations, finance to approve budgets, legal to review vendor contracts. Everything takes longer than you want.

What Success Looks Like

• Forecast accuracy improves to within 15-20% by end of year one
• CRM adoption hits 90%+ (reps actually log activities, update stages, use it daily)
• Territory and comp plans get deployed on time with minimal drama
• Executive dashboards become the single source of truth—no more "let me pull that data" delays
• You hire 1-2 ops analysts to take tactical work off your plate

Who You're Supporting

Primary Stakeholders:

• CRO: Needs accurate forecasts, pipeline visibility, and confidence in the numbers for board meetings
• VP of Sales: Needs territory plans, comp structures, performance dashboards, and help coaching reps on process
• AEs and SEs: Need a CRM that doesn't slow them down, clear comp plans, and easy access to customer data
• CEO and Finance: Need revenue predictability, bookings trends, and confidence that GTM is scaling efficiently

What They Care About:

• CRO: "Can I trust this forecast?" "Why are deals slipping?" "How do we scale without adding headcount linearly?"
• Sales Leaders: "Which reps are underperforming and why?" "Where are we losing deals?" "How do I allocate resources?"
• AEs: "How am I tracking to quota?" "Where's my commission statement?" "Why is Salesforce so annoying?"
• Finance: "What's our ARR trajectory?" "What's CAC payback?" "Are we hitting our bookings plan?"

Requirements

• 5-8 years in sales operations, revenue operations, or sales strategy roles
• Expert-level Salesforce admin skills—you've configured complex Salesforce instances before
• Strong in Excel/Sheets and BI tools (Tableau, Looker, or similar)—you model territories, quotas, and forecasts
• Experience at a B2B company selling $100K+ ACV deals with 3+ month sales cycles
• Understanding of SaaS or subscription metrics (ARR, churn, expansion) is helpful but not required
• Ability to work cross-functionally with sales, finance, product, and engineering
• Comfortable with ambiguity—this role is still being defined, you need to figure out what to prioritize
• Manufacturing or industrial sales experience is a plus but not required