With the emergence of technology, there has been a paradigm shift in
the way people communicate
Also with the rampant usage of internet,
search engines and other tools which are easily accessible, the consumers are
in a better place to determine the products which fulfill their business needs
instead of having to depend on sales personnel to guide them.
In today’s
world, business decisions are driven by data. A company with a significant
amount of business data is in a better position to make effective business
decisions provided the data is in a centralized location and is easily
accessible by stakeholders who have the capability to make decisions.
What needs to change?
Companies need
to adapt to this changing landscape and agile sales is an optimal solution to
address the sales needs of companies in today’s world. Agile sales is an
approach which helps sales team to work efficiently as well as at a faster
pace, while minimizing waste and delivering better and faster results. It is
driven on the four crucial values of Agile methodology in software development
i.e.
⮚
Sales team
members and their respective interactions with customers hold more value than
established tools and processes.
⮚
A working
sales model is much more effective than exhaustive documentation.
⮚
Collaborating
with customers to determine their needs is much more effective than negotiating
and winning a customer contract.
⮚
Responding
to a customer’s need is much more effective than creating an aggressive sales
plan to achieve yearly targets.
How Agile Sales works?
Agile is a
methodology which came into prominence in the software industry by streamlining
the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). It provided an alternative to the
traditional methodology i.e. Waterfall. Following are some steps to implement
Agile methodology in your sales team.
⮚
Set Short-term Goals: Achieving annual sales goals is more often
than not a very daunting task and can be overwhelming for the sales team. With
the market shrinking with the emergence of various new tools like online marketplaces, the task gets even more
challenging. Hence, breaking down the sales goals into smaller and flexible
targets spanned over shorter time intervals, makes it appear easier to achieve
and hence can boost the confidence of the sales team.
⮚
Building small, multi faceted and cohesive agile sales team: It often happens that members of a sales team
are highly competitive and individualistic when it comes to achieving sales
target. However agile methodology advocates just the opposite i.e. a supportive,
cohesive and collaborative team where the sales target can be achieved as a
team and not as individuals. The methodology advocates that a team should set
realistic goals and should try and achieve it together. They should win as a
team or lose as a team. It also advocates that the team should be multi faceted
comprising of members with various skill-sets like marketing, data analytics,
sales etc. who can work together to achieve the goals.
⮚
Scaling the sales team as a team of teams: The methodology advocates that the scaling of
sales team shouldn’t happen by adding members to the agile sales team. Instead
a new small agile sales team should be created with a different set of goals
thereby forming a team of teams which is lead by a senior associate as required.
When different teams working under a large team and having different goals, it
results in the teams working with more cohesion and less friction, thereby
contributing towards achieving the overall sales goals of the company.
⮚
Having the right agile processes set-up for the
agile sales teams to follow: The
agile methodology will work fine if the relevant processes are set-up
correctly. The critical processes to be considered are:
●
Sprints: The block of time decided by the agile team to complete a
set amount of work
●
Daily Stand-ups: 15 minute meeting among the agile team to provide a status
update of what was done on the previous day and what needs to be completed on
the particular day
●
Sprint Reviews: The meeting to discuss about the targets met in the
current sprint and set targets for the next sprint.
●
Sprint Retro: The meeting among the agile sales team facilitated to
discuss about the challenges faced by the agile team in the recently concluded
sprint and what changes need to be done in order to overcome those challenges
in the subsequent sprints.
●
Maintaining the burndown charts: Burndown charts graphically represent the tasks
left to do versus time. It paints a picture of what has been completed and how
much outstanding work is left.
⮚
Using the right tools to measure the team
performance: Accountability is a major factor in the
success of any agile team. Without an automated system, it becomes very challenging
to track the performance of a sales team and it becomes very difficult to hold
team members accountable for
their activities. This is where the Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) system comes into play.
Sales is one of
the most crucial factors for the success of a company. In this ever-changing
landscape, companies have to adapt to get ahead of their competitors. Moving
towards agile sales, will help leverage the most out of the sales team and
provide the best possible results in the foreseeable future.
Please reach out
to us on support@winobell.com
for a free demo on how agile sales can be implemented in Salesforce.
