Joslynn Odom Talks Using Data to Understand Sales Goals

Every company—no matter the industry—relies on their sales teams to help bring their products and solutions to their customers. And, at a large company like Ping, there are so many ways to utilize data to understand sales patterns and aspire towards new sales goals. This was Joslynn Odom’s experience as a Sales Operations Intern at Ping Identity.

Read about her experience here:

Prior to my internship at Ping, I took advantage of the many remote internships out there. For instance, previously, I was a sales development representative intern, business development intern, marketing intern, and a product launch intern. I knew that I wanted to explore the sales field more, so I began looking into sales operations, where I came across Ping. I was pleasantly surprised with how much exposure I would get to other sales teams while in this internship role.

I was happy to land the role as a Sales Operations Intern at Ping. I didn’t have too many expectations with this being my first in-person internship, and also far away from my hometown in Ohio. But, some of my goals were to take advantage of this unique opportunity by learning different skills and being able to actually speak with different people all across the sales department face-to-face. 

One of my first assignments was to complete an Excel case study given to new hires, in which I had to forecast sales based off of data from previous fiscal years. I had to analyze the data and note any sales trends that I saw, such as regions with the highest sales and what years had the highest sales.

Another assignment was to create new commission statements for several different sales teams using the programming language, Python. A commission statement should reflect a company’s goals, a salesperson’s performance, and the way they are paid. If a commission statement does not clearly show their sales target, then there can be misunderstandings. My co-intern and I organized a focus group with account executives, sales representatives and other commission-based Ping employees to see what metrics or visualizations they would want to see in a commission statement.

We were able to implement almost all features that were requested, including a visual of each sales representative’s attainment. A quota attainment is a measure of a sales representative’s performance. It shows whether or not they are reaching their sales target in a given period. This is one of the most important things to see for someone who is commission-based.

One of my biggest challenges with the assignment of creating new commission statements using Python was with using Python itself. I’m a novice to Python and this was my first time working with Python on a project such as this, which required me to work with large amounts of data. It was also crucial to ensure that the total compensation and commission was correct.

Another challenge with coding commission statements was learning the lingo that Ping and the sales department used. Each sales department is paid differently and with different metrics, so we had to understand those differences before beginning our code.

If I could go back, I would make sure that I had a full understanding of my assignment before jumping into it. Creating a plan of action would have saved me a lot of time from having to backtrack my work. I realized that I was making changes to my code and imputing different data and numbers that were not needed. Also, I would take advantage of those around me who could help. Yes, it’s good to be able to work through things yourself, but it’s also alright to ask for help before you find yourself spending hours on one task.

My biggest takeaway so far is to embrace the feeling of uncertainty when it comes to new assignments because that means that I will soon learn something new. I wouldn’t be as satisfied as an intern if I knew how to perfectly do every assignment given. It shows that my sales operations team has a lot to teach me.

We’re always looking for talent at Ping! Interested in applying for Ping’s Intern program? We’d love to hear from you. See if we are hiring for interns near you, here!