The Ultimate Guide to Agile Sales
Posted: Tue Dec 17, 2024 6:32 am
Effective sales management relies on a variety of different strategies, such as being able to motivate your teams, set goals and quotas, motivate reps, and review data and performance.
While all of these strategies can lead you to success, there are also frameworks to follow, such as agile sales management, that will complement your process.
In this post, learn about agile sales, how to grow a successful agile sales team, and key processes to follow.
Agile sales takes project management strategies from controlling directors email list the IT world—like sprints, daily standups, and constant iterations—and applies them to sales to help teams be more flexible and effectively meet customers at their stages of the customer journey.
Why should you care about agile sales?
There are three changes in the world of sales that should make you sit up and pay attention.
First, millennials are making up larger and larger parts of your sales team. Right now, they're probably SDRs and AEs, with a few ambitious ones taking management or even director positions. But in eight years, millennials may fill half of your leadership positions. In 15? They'll probably retain them all.
That means you can’t keep using the same techniques and tactics. These professionals have grown up with constant access to information. As a result, they are independent, quick learners, enjoy collaboration, are incredibly tech-savvy, and get bored doing the same things over and over again. Agile sales helps you adapt your sales organization to fit these characteristics.
Second, your customers are different. Few people have the patience or desire to be forced through a rigid sales process. They can now learn on their own, and they will quickly lose interest if your reps make them answer a long list of questions about things they could have learned online or that don't add any value to the research process.
If you want your salespeople to deliver unique, consultative, high-value experiences to each and every buyer they interact with, the agile sales methodology makes it much easier for reps to respond in real time and meet customer needs.
Finally, we have an unprecedented amount of data. You can learn everything from your lowest-performing rep’s average call-to-demo conversion rate to the average number of deals closed on the last day of the month in just a few clicks. The dark side of all this data? If you’re not focused and intentional, you’ll get lost in it. Agile sales involves constantly reviewing and reacting to data, making it an ideal solution.
While all of these strategies can lead you to success, there are also frameworks to follow, such as agile sales management, that will complement your process.
In this post, learn about agile sales, how to grow a successful agile sales team, and key processes to follow.
Agile sales takes project management strategies from controlling directors email list the IT world—like sprints, daily standups, and constant iterations—and applies them to sales to help teams be more flexible and effectively meet customers at their stages of the customer journey.
Why should you care about agile sales?
There are three changes in the world of sales that should make you sit up and pay attention.
First, millennials are making up larger and larger parts of your sales team. Right now, they're probably SDRs and AEs, with a few ambitious ones taking management or even director positions. But in eight years, millennials may fill half of your leadership positions. In 15? They'll probably retain them all.
That means you can’t keep using the same techniques and tactics. These professionals have grown up with constant access to information. As a result, they are independent, quick learners, enjoy collaboration, are incredibly tech-savvy, and get bored doing the same things over and over again. Agile sales helps you adapt your sales organization to fit these characteristics.
Second, your customers are different. Few people have the patience or desire to be forced through a rigid sales process. They can now learn on their own, and they will quickly lose interest if your reps make them answer a long list of questions about things they could have learned online or that don't add any value to the research process.
If you want your salespeople to deliver unique, consultative, high-value experiences to each and every buyer they interact with, the agile sales methodology makes it much easier for reps to respond in real time and meet customer needs.
Finally, we have an unprecedented amount of data. You can learn everything from your lowest-performing rep’s average call-to-demo conversion rate to the average number of deals closed on the last day of the month in just a few clicks. The dark side of all this data? If you’re not focused and intentional, you’ll get lost in it. Agile sales involves constantly reviewing and reacting to data, making it an ideal solution.