The Interview

Kluster's Take

Tom spoke with Paul Barnhurst, Director of Finance Sales Operations and Analytics at DigiCert, Inc. He shares his thoughtful take on finance and sales working in partnership.

Paul believes that there’s a critical link between finance and sales operations. In some companies, finance are doing some operations tasks. He believes that it’s critical the 2 work together. You need to align sales commissions and understand customer acquisition costs. Paul helps operations track how many salespeople they need, aligning to company goals. He has worked in situations where there wasn’t much of a sales operations function and a lot of it fell on finance. The ideal situation is sales and finance identifying the right metrics together. There are times when you are profitable and getting unhealthy revenue growth. Finance is able to help with this, coordinating work. 

Paul has developed a good relationship with the head of sales, he is a trusted partner. Through achieving quick wins, he's gained trust. Now ops and finance can work on big corporate objectives together.