The Pipeline Fixer
Sales operations consultant · South Africa

What a sales operations consultant does, and when to hire one.

Sales ops works on the system a team sells inside, not on the selling: the stages, who owns the next step, what the CRM is set up to do, how follow-up happens when nobody remembers, and what gets reported on Monday. You hire one when there is real lead flow but the pipeline still feels like guesswork.

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// most people have two of five

01 · What it solves

Deals are rarely lost to competitors. They are lost to silence.

  1. 01 Qualification with no criteria Everything that enquires becomes a deal, so the pipeline is a list of hopes.
  2. 02 Stages that move on feelings A deal advances because it felt good on the call, not because the buyer did something.
  3. 03 Proposals that go quiet Sent, then nothing. No sequence, no owner, no date.
  4. 04 Handovers nobody owns After the yes, the deal falls between sales and delivery.
  5. 05 A book nobody goes back to Existing clients are the cheapest revenue in the business and the least worked.
Chanel Greeff
Who’s writing this Chanel Greeff

I build sales systems for founder-led businesses from Pretoria, and I spent a decade running the teams that had to use them: financial services, payments, recruitment, education and US legal staffing. What follows is what I say on a first call, written out.

More about me →
10 yearsinside commercial teams, not beside them
4 buildswith their numbers on the Results page
SA · UK · USworked from Pretoria
02 · What it is

The system accumulated. Nobody designed it.

Every sales team works inside a system, whether or not anyone designed it: the stages, the rule for when a deal moves, the person who owns the next step, the tool it’s recorded in, the sequence that fires when a prospect goes quiet, and the report someone reads on Monday. In most growing businesses it accumulated around whoever was selling at the time, and it keeps working right up until the moment it doesn’t: usually the quarter the second salesperson starts.

Sales operations is the discipline of designing that system on purpose — then leaving, with the team running it.

03 · Versus a manager

Three different jobs, three different fixes

Sales manager Runs the people. Targets, pipeline reviews, coaching, hiring. Day to day, permanent.
Sales trainer Works on the person. How to open, how to handle an objection, how to close.
Sales operations Runs the thing both stand on. The stages, the CRM, the follow-up, the reporting. A project, not a seat.

If good people are underperforming inside a process that changes every week, more training won’t help. And if what you want is someone to run the team day to day, that’s a manager — I’ll tell you so on the first call.

04 · When to hire

Five moments worth the call

  • Before the second or third sales hire — the hire inherits a process instead of a head.
  • When the founder is still selling and revenue is capped by their calendar.
  • When the CRM was bought before a process existed.
  • After investment, when a board expects an operation, not an effort.
  • After a few big losses nobody can explain.
The promise

The guarantee starts at handover. If your team isn’t running it thirty days later, I do another thirty days at no charge to find out why and put it right.

When I’m the wrong call

If there’s no real lead flow yet, the problem is demand, not process, and I’m the wrong first call.

05 · The engagement

Name the problem, then fix only that

A free call, where I give my read from the outside and say plainly if there’s nothing worth paying for. Most founders can already name the leak, so every problem on the pricing page is a fix with a flat price and a written cap: deals going quiet after the meeting is Fix my follow-up, numbers nobody trusts is Build my dashboard. The call confirms the cause; it can’t raise a listed price. If you can’t name it, Find the leak is seven days in your own CRM and your last ninety days of deals. Starting from spreadsheets, the CRM, the alerts and the playbook are built together, for less. Every build carries the guarantee: running it thirty days after handover, or another thirty days at no charge. Keep it running comes afterwards, and only once something is live.

Not sure it’s worth a week? Move the four dials on the leak-cost calculator → — deals in play, average value, share that stall and days they sit there, against the fee.

06 · What it costs

Published in full, because “book a call to find out” is its own leak

Find the leak7 days · 14 pages · goes toward the fixes you start inside 30 days R19,800
Fix the form and routing1 week · one form, one destination · the smallest fix on the menu R9,400
Fix my follow-up1 week · stage-by-stage timing, seven templates, tasks that fire on their own R17,600
Set up my CRM2 weeks · from spreadsheets · the largest fix on the menu R44,000
Keep it runningmonthly · only once something is live · month to month after three R22,000 / mo
Sales Ops Power Hoursixty minutes on one specific problem R1,700
It goes toward the build

Find the leak goes toward the fixes you start within thirty days, and your sheet shows exactly how much comes off before you agree anything. Where two fixes share work, the sheet takes it off once, with the reason on the line.

All sixteen problems and their prices are on the pricing page, and every other line is on the itemised list. Prices are in rand from a rand price list of its own, excluding VAT if applicable; switch to USD for the dollar list.Prices are in US dollars; switch to ZAR for the rand list.

07 · What to measure

Five numbers on one screen, every Monday.

  1. 01 Stage conversion Demo to close, stage by stage. The one that hurts to look at.
  2. 02 Days in stage The outliers, not the average — an average hides the deal that has sat there 41 days.
  3. 03 Deals gone quiet No touch logged in fourteen days or more, with the value beside it.
  4. 04 Forecast vs closed By rep, by month. The gap tells you whether the stages describe anything real.
  5. 05 Follow-up rate On every proposal sent, because that is where the silence starts.
Where I’ve done it most

Two industries with their own version of the leak

The five places are the same everywhere. What changes is the vocabulary and which two of them you have.

Industry page Financial advisers & insurance brokers Advice that stalls at underwriting, and a book nobody goes back to. Read it → Industry page Staffing & recruitment Offers out, ageing from 12 to 44 days, and not one of them owned. Read it →

Questions people ask

In the order they come up on a first call.

  1. Definition

    What does a sales operations consultant actually do?

    Works on the system a team sells inside rather than on the selling itself. Diagnoses where deals stall, designs the process, builds it in the CRM you already run, trains the team, then leaves.

    // process, not people

  2. Timing

    When should a business hire one?

    When there’s real lead flow but the pipeline still feels like guesswork: a second or third salesperson going in, the founder still doing most of the selling, a CRM bought before a process existed, or a few big deals lost to silence.

  3. Disqualifier

    When is it not worth paying for?

    Before there’s consistent lead flow. No leads to work means no process to diagnose — the problem is demand, and I’ll say so on the first call rather than sell you a fix.

    // sometimes there isn’t a problem worth fixing

  4. Cost

    What does it cost in South Africa?

    Every fix has a flat price in rand, from its own rand price list rather than a conversion: from R9,400 for the form and routing to R44,000 to set up a CRM from spreadsheets, excluding VAT if applicable, and nothing shared is paid for twice. Find the leak is R19,800, and it goes toward the fixes you start inside 30 days; your sheet shows exactly how much comes off. Keep it running is R22,000 / mo. The same fixes are priced in US dollars for clients outside South Africa.Every fix has a flat price in US dollars, from $700 for the form and routing to $3,400 to set up a CRM from spreadsheets, and nothing shared is paid for twice. Find the leak is $1,550, and it goes toward the fixes you start inside 30 days; your sheet shows exactly how much comes off. Keep it running is $1,700 / mo. South African businesses can switch to rand, from a rand price list of its own.

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