A glimpse into working in our Sales Operations Team
By: Natalie Lim
Tags: Carousell, Culture, E Commerce Business, Philippines, Sales Operations

Durben from Sales Ops team

This series takes a peek into what each of our team does and how they work with the other teams towards our mission of inspiring every person in the world to start selling and buying to make more possible for one another.

When Business Administration and Accountancy graduate Durben passed his CPA Licensure exam, he was torn between going into the usual path most CPAs take into Auditing and Accounting, or going into what he personally believed is one of the most dynamic and exciting industries right now: e-commerce. Durben originally entered OLX in November 2018 (prior to the acquisition) as a Management Trainee, and was rotated across four different functions before being promoted in October 2020. Durben has recently graduated from the management trainee programme, and is currently a Sales Operations Associate Specialist, part of the Sales Operations and Enablement Team.

He shares that the team is divided into three main functions: Sales Operations, Sales Support, and Sales Enablement. The first handles more planning and reporting work such as forecasting and pricing analysis. The second covers contract fulfillment and order processing. The third manages the sales onboarding processes and training of sales tools.

“We help the sales teams by ensuring that they have the resources and information they need and that the processes are in place so that they can sell effectively. As the Sales Ops Business Partner for the Philippines, I handle a lot of sales reports and ad-hoc projects to support the different business units. In addition to that, I’ve also been entrusted with some regional reports which help track the performance of the different markets,” explains Durben.

Half of his average work day is spent on meetings with different departments on the resources they need and how to improve on certain processes. After that, he focuses on generating reports. “My role helps business units focus on what they need to do by supporting them with their needs or requests. By providing timely and relevant information to teams with which are more customer facing than I am, I generate value for users and hopefully inspire them to start and continue using Carousell,” he shares.

Durben is happiest when he finishes building a sales dashboard from scratch or manages to semi- or fully-automate reports. “Recently, I finished creating a regional semi-automated dashboard which incorporates a dozen reports from different markets and summarises them into a single file which stakeholders can easily view to monitor certain metrics. I also love helping others with questions about Google Sheets. I have conducted my own training for my colleagues in the Philippines office,” he shared.

There was an increase of pace due to challenges that Covid-19 brought about. “Usually the toughest challenges are those problems which you didn’t anticipate at the start of the planning process. As much as we are able to design and introduce a process with an ideal end state in mind, there will always be room for deviations. These might come at a surprise at first, but rational and logical thinking always help me solve my problems. Knowing that you have reliable teammates whom you can ask for support and advice, as well as having guidance from the upper management are always reassuring,” said Durben.

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