Senior Sales Ops Manager, SLED Operations

Company Description

** This role is also open to hire in our New York and Plano TX offices with a hybrid working schedule of 3 days/week in-office. Relocation assistance is not available. ** 

Our Mission

At Palo Alto Networks® everything starts and ends with our mission:

Being the cybersecurity partner of choice, protecting our digital way of life.

Our vision is a world where each day is safer and more secure than the one before. We are a company built on the foundation of challenging and disrupting the way things are done, and we’re looking for innovators who are as committed to shaping the future of cybersecurity as we are.

Our Approach to Work

We lead with flexibility and choice in all of our people programs. We have disrupted the traditional view that all employees have the same needs and wants. We offer personalization and offer our employees the opportunity to choose what works best for them as often as possible - from your wellbeing support to your growth and development, and beyond!

At Palo Alto Networks, we believe in the power of collaboration and value in-person interactions. This is why our employees generally work from the office three days per week, leaving two days for choice and flexibility to work where you feel most effective. This setup fosters casual conversations, problem-solving, and trusted relationships. While details may evolve, our goal is to create an environment where innovation thrives, with office-based teams coming together three days a week to collaborate and thrive, together!

Job Description

Your Career

We are looking for a Senior Sales Operations Manager to support the US SLED leadership team in all aspects of the business. You will partner with Channel, Marketing, Finance, and HR while being an integral part of the North American Sales Operations organization. This role is a great fit for a self-starter who enjoys driving business impact and operational efficiency, can serve as an internal consultant (e.g., problem solver) and owner and will have the opportunity for significant exposure and visibility across the business.

The candidate in this role will provide leadership and advisory support in driving Sales Productivity, GTM Strategy, Sales Planning, Sales Forecasting, Segmentation, and Sales Analytics.

Your Impact

• Act as key business partner to US Senior VP and Regional Management Team interfacing cross-functionally in the organization
• Drive forecasting, deal structuring and participate in a month-end and quarter-end close process:
  • Set up cadences and inspection of quarterly targets and forecasts for the overall SLED US Sales teams
  • Optimize forecast accuracy by driving discipline with pipeline hygiene and forecast management
  • Facilitate tracking of outstanding purchase orders, ensuring order compliance, bookings reports, etc
  • Manage compliance of the non-standard transactions process; track quarterly metrics on average discounts, non-standard exceptions and recommend action items to improve these metrics
• Drive Sales Operations Planning, Quarterly Business Review meetings and Territory Planning with Sales Management Team
  • Run data analytics and partner with the strategy to assess the total addressable commercial market, product propensity to buy and optimize territory coverage. Use this to develop SLED bundles for Enterprise, Majors customers, in collaboration with marketing, partners and the renewals team
  • Work closely with functional and sales management on GTM segmentation and coverage strategy implementation
  • Provide analysis and reporting of compensation plan effectiveness and efficiency, including performance reporting at the individual, manager, and regional levels. Compile, assess and report on performance and earnings distributions.
  • Drive standards in territory planning with SLED sales and partners. 
  • Develop a repeatable motion for account planning, lead generation and pipeline development, whereby sellers prioritize their top whitespace accounts, with sellers handing off other accounts to partners. 
• Manage all aspects of Operations, Tools, Dashboards and Reporting for the US SLED sector:
  • Support process enhancements, modifications and best practices development
  • Assist in driving field readiness for new sales hires and ongoing sales processes training
  • Track and manage pipe generation across the direct field, partner and support functions 
  • Set up and manage sales play programs to drive pipe generation and optimize deals across whitespace accounts, underpenetrated accounts and renewing customers.
  • Review and identify areas for improvement leading to operational efficiency, process optimization and field acceleration (sales enablement