What is Agile Sales?
Agile sales is a way of doing sales that focuses on speed, flexibility, and wasting as little as possible. It applies agile project management to the sales process, meaning that teams can focus on smaller, more immediate goals while working toward bigger, longer-term goals.
The five main ideas that make up the agile sales approach are:
- Responsibility: Agile methods make sure that everyone on the team is responsible for their growth. This means that sales reps will have to be more open with bosses about how their sales efforts are going and check in with them more often.
- Flexibility: Because projects (or, in this case, sales initiatives) are broken up into “sprints,” agile sales makes it easy to switch gears and try out new strategies quickly. This way, sales reps and company leaders can quickly see what’s working and what needs to be changed.
Keeping track of sales success is very important for an agile sales team. Teams can correctly and continuously track their progress and success when they have clear, measurable goals.
- Collaboration: The agile sales process is based on teams, customers, sellers, and everyone working together. This makes it easier to talk to each other and make decisions more quickly.
- Continuous iteration: Continual iteration is one of the most important parts of agile methods. Instead of long meetings or breaks between sales cycles, it goes faster and has more hands-on meetings.
The main idea behind agile methods is that a sales team will find out more quickly if a new plan works or not if they try it out quickly. Agile methods allow salespeople to make changes, take advantage of chances, and eliminate failures before they cost the company too much. This is true whether they’re selling into a new market, testing a new outbound strategy, or changing how the company is organized.
Like words
- Flexible handling of sales
- An agile way of selling
- Flexible ways to make sales
Pros of using agile sales management
Even though agile concepts were first created for managing IT projects, they can be used to help all kinds of businesses with their sales. Several departments use them now and say that their sales and profits have grown by 60%.
Here are some of the best things about agile sales management:
Less time to market
A rapid sprint allows a product creator to build a new product or feature. An agile sales team can do the same thing. Sales managers can’t know how to sell new products that haven’t been out for long (1 or 2 months at most).
The double-whammy is using an agile method to create new products and features and following it up with solid sales execution. This way, a good product won’t miss the mark because it wasn’t sold correctly.
Better experience selling
Frontline workers are the ones who talk to customers, so it’s essential for them to feel like they can make mistakes. Open lines of contact, daily meetings, and constant updates between sales managers and their employees help reps get better immediately and get back on their feet faster.
A lot of companies that use an agile method also use collaborative selling. This helps reps learn and grow each other, grow their networks faster, and give customers a better experience by working together and consulting with them. Collaboration in sales also makes employees happier with their jobs and improves the company’s culture as a whole.
Better retention of sales staff
The regular rate of sales change is up to 35% per year. That is about three times more than any other job. No matter what, sales is a tough job. Agile sales management makes it easier on employees by giving them more freedom and offering a support system.
Reps and their managers meet daily (or almost every day) during sales sprints. This way, workers can improve in real-time instead of looking back at their sales QBR to see if they met their quota.
Real-time insights and progress
A lot of the time, sales research is done after the fact. The sales team won’t know how reasonable their efforts were until they want to look back at them. You don’t hear from sales managers to their executive team or executives to the board daily.
Agile sales teams can get information immediately and use it to make changes that improve their chances of success. Now, we don’t have to wait for trends to happen. Instead, we must move quickly and change our plans based on the data.
Ultimately, everything works out much better when you look at your sales numbers at the month’s or quarter’s end.
Better Allocation of Resources
When it comes to sales, every hot lead or qualified buyer that doesn’t turn into a closed deal because of a lousy approach costs the company tens of thousands of dollars or more.
Time is money in this way. The potential cost is vast when teams work on deals incorrectly for too long.
With the agile method, you don’t have to worry about wasting extra resources on processes. Teams can quickly see what’s working and put their resources into those projects because sales sprints are shorter, and everyone often measures progress.
The Agile Sales Methodology Broken Down
Short sprints
Work is divided into “sprints” in agile sales. These are one- or two-week times when the sales team works on reaching specific goals. They are meant to make it easier for teams to work together, improve communication and decision-making, and make it easier to change strategies quickly.
Sprints could be used for several different goals in sales. Some of the most common reasons for sprints are to launch outbound campaigns, bring on board a new group of people, find sales chances in a new market or area, and make structural changes within the company.
Make plans for the short term.
Every sprint cycle, there is a kickoff meeting for the team to talk about their goals, aims, and strategies. The meeting lasts two to four hours and breaks down big goals into smaller, more manageable tasks that can be done daily.
Short-term goals may not seem to have as much effect initially, but they do over time. Reaching small, short-term goals is the first step toward long-term goals. In this part of the agile sales process, the end goal is broken down into steps that can be taken.
You might want to get to the Winner’s Circle this quarter, but you must sell 130% of your goal. Also, you would have to beat your sales numbers from the previous quarter by 25%, which you don’t think you can do.
Let’s say your goal is $100,000. This quarter, you’ll need to sell $130,000, which is much more than the $104,000 you made last quarter, to get the top-performer award.
Don’t stress out over the significant number ($130,000); instead, set smaller goals:
- First month: sell $40,000
- Second month: Make $45,000
- Third month: Make $45,000
You can break it down even more if you know your average deal size and rate of close. For example, you could sell 25 deals worth $3,000. Find out how long the average sales cycle is. This will help you determine how much time you need to plan for each prospect.
Everyday Standups
The team has a “standup” meeting every morning (or every other day). These meetings aim to talk about the day’s progress, wins, and failures. During a talk, everyone gives a short report on their accomplishments and any problems they have.
Standups are an excellent chance for people to work together with:
- Teams for BDR and AE
- Managers and directors
- Sales and marketing
- Teams for marketing (to get leads)
- Customer growth teams (to cross-sell and up-sell)
There’s no need for a stand-up meeting to last more than five to fifteen minutes. The purpose is to share quick reports and discuss what everyone has been working on.
They should start at the start of the day, if possible, so any problems can be found and fixed the same day they are discussed.
Do something right away.
Stand-up talks are constructive because they let the team act quickly and change their plans. Someone can bring up a problem at the standup if a particular approach isn’t working or if they run into an unexpected problem while trying to close a deal. This will cause everyone to change their plan for the rest of the sales activities that day.
Standups let everyone see what’s working and what’s not in everyone’s work for the day (or week) so everyone can change how they do things to get the best results.
Under the old approach of a yearly review, this kind of real-time response is not possible. But this is how flexible sales usually work.
One Source of Truth
One of the main reasons why sales groups aren’t aligned is terrible data quality. It’s hard to track what’s happening across the company because everyone is working from their point of view.
Agile sales ensures everyone has real-time access to the same information by combining a CRM, tools that help with sales, and a platform for sales interaction. This includes the most recent deals, performance reports, sales call analysis, and customer feedback. Everyone can access these reports and data simultaneously, so everyone is on the same page.
Make use of data and metrics.
Data is useless if it’s not used correctly, of course. In some situations, sales data and insights are helpful.
It’s possible that many of the leads you had last quarter dropped out of the pipeline after your first discovery calls (shown in CRM). You figure out what’s wrong because your sales engagement tool records call so you can listen to them again later.
- You talk all the time without giving the prospect a chance to answer.
- You tell them too much about the goods before you know what they want.
- It would be best if you asked more open-ended questions.
The KPIs you should aim for next month are:
- Having at least six free-form conversations on every discovery call
- Let the prospect answer before moving on to the next subject
- Nearly 25:75 talk-to-listen time
- A 30% conversion rate from discovery call to sales demo
A sales manager might pay attention to different KPIs, like the number of sales, the size of the deals, and the percentage of quotas met. It’s easy for sales reps to reach their long-term goals when they keep their short-term goals in mind, like the ones above.
From a manager’s point of view, this means working with the team (and each person separately) to figure out what problems might be happening (like the one above), then going backward to set and track short-term goals that will help them reach their long-term goals.
Check on the Progress
The traditional way to sell is to wait until the QBR looks at results, which doesn’t involve the sales team significantly. With a flexible sale, there are regular reviews of progress.
The team meets every few weeks (or months, based on how long your sprints are) to talk about what went well and what didn’t. What went well, what didn’t go as planned, and any changes they need to make for the next run are talked over.
At these meetings, you should also take the time to thank everyone for their work, which doesn’t always happen on traditional sales teams.
At each review, everyone should have a few minutes to talk about what they learned, what went well, and what didn’t during that time. This helps people get along on the team and encourages personal growth within the company.
Frameworks for Agile Sales
There are three main types of agile frameworks: Scrum, Kanban, and Scrumban (hybrid).
Using Scrum
Scrum is the most well-known agile methodology by far. The work is divided into sprints lasting no more than 4 weeks. Teams work on specific jobs and priorities during each sprint until the sprint ends.
When you use agile sales management, the Scrum team comprises sales reps and managers, business development reps, account executives, and key people from the marketing and customer success groups. They would focus on the tasks and goals in their sprint, like finishing deals, setting up discovery calls, or making content to keep customers interested.
In scrum, the most critical parts are worked on first. Agile sales means focusing on one or two KPIs and what tasks can be done daily to reach those goals.
A Kanban
Kanban is an agile structure that is all about how work gets done. It focuses on “just in time” delivery, which helps teams quickly adapt to what customers want and change how they work throughout the customer journey.
Sticky notes or digital cards on kanban boards show the whole sales process, from the beginning to the end. Each card shows a job and its status, including when it was finished, who is working on it, when it’s due, and any problems that need to be fixed.
A rapid sales team could write the following on Kanban boards:
- Deals that are about to go through
- The tasks that go along with each deal
- How far they’ve come with those tasks
- Who is in charge of them?
These will help the sales team quickly figure out what tasks they need to do first to meet their sprint goals. As they move through the sales funnel, they track how each job is going and can change how they do things as needed.
Mix of
The combined method, sometimes called Scrumban, takes parts of Scrum and Kanban and lets teams make their process.
With it, you can get the best of both worlds: the detailed task tracking of Kanban and the focus on the short-term goals of the scrum. Your sales team might be able to make the most of their sprints and keep track of the progress of each deal’s activities if they use both.
What You Need to Do to Use Agile Sales
CRM stands for customer relationship management.
CRM is the most essential part of any sales process. All customer data is kept there, and it’s the only source of truth regarding sales success. It also shows how each sales pipeline is doing. A sales action doesn’t happen if it’s not in CRM.
When sales workers use CRM, it’s easy for them to keep an eye on what their competitors are doing, see a profile of each customer, and see how their deals are going.
Sales managers can also look at data, monitor how their teams are doing, and run the sales processes.
Managing the pipeline and opportunities
CRM typically has features like opportunity and pipeline management, but some tools can be used independently and offer specific features. These include tools for forecasting and analyzing, tools for making reports, and advanced workflow automation for selling complicated things.
The most important thing about a pipelining tool is that it lets you see how the sales process goes. It should always be possible to see which deals are in each stage, making it easy for sales managers to keep track of progress and move deals forward.
Set up, price, and quote (CPQ)
CPQ software speeds up the deal cycle by a vast amount, which is why it is an essential part of any flexible sales team. Reps don’t have to set up products or packages directly; instead, they can use CPQ to choose the best ones for prospects based on rules set by the company.
CPQ instantly makes a quote, proposal, or contract once the product configuration is finished. This reduces time and eliminates errors in previously done work by hand. During the deal cycle, from when the quote was sent to when it was accepted or denied, it can also keep track of its progress.
It has a direct link to product data, so it knows who is buying what and how long the sales are taking. By reviewing this data during daily standups, sales reps can quickly find any problems in the sales process.
Engaging with Sales
Tools for sales interaction keep track of everything, from how responsive customers are to how they feel. They are accommodating to salespeople in the agile sales process because they help them understand how to improve how they talk to customers.
The main parts of sales engagement software are tools that make contact with customers easier and keep track of those interactions. It should be able to show information about how quickly sales reps respond to leads, what material they send, and how customers read it.
