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How to Help Your Sales Team Keep Up using Agile Methodology

Updated: April 1, 2022

Your sales team plays more than one role in helping your business succeed. They are the business’s improvement drivers.

In an ever-changing marketplace, your salespeople need to be one step ahead of everyone else, ready to adapt and improve when a challenge is thrown their way. They need to continually lookout for the best methods to perform their jobs effectively.

While the responsibilities placed on their shoulders can be heavy, there is a way a sales team can keep up with the demand. All they need is to cope up with the fast-paced changes by finding the best method of operation that will work for them.

 

How the Agile Methodology Started

The Agile Methodology is a project management approach used in software development. It assists teams in managing a project by breaking it down into several stages and letting members collaborate while aiming for improvement and iteration at each stage.

The need for this methodology became apparent in the late 90s to around the early 2000s. Back then, there was an intense business demand for software development that developers could no longer keep up. This resulted in long lead times and sometimes abandonment of the project.

The thought leaders in the industry then came together and decided to rework the existing process. Their goal was to deploy complicated hardware and software to the client and end-users while ensuring a short turnover period.

That was when they developed the Agile Method. It encouraged fast delivery of service by shortening each project’s release cycle. This methodology also allowed the gathering of practical and helpful feedback which improved their future releases.

 

How the Agile Methodology Benefits Sales Teams

The Agile Method is a proven methodology not only for the software industry. Even the sales team and marketing team adopted the process in their respective industries, and they resulted in success each time.

Particularly in sales, the Agile works by helping the team become more flexible and effective in choosing their selling approach. This trait is highly needed in today’s time wherein people have shorter attention spans, and most information they need are easily searchable online. As part of the sales team, the members need to have strategic agility to provide what their new market needs promptly.

With the help of the agile methodology, the sales team can better personalize their approach to match their buyers’ needs while still applying an analytical approach to their current efforts. It also allowed the team to determine which valuable sales metrics to use for each project.

 

Making the Method Work

There are two things to consider when introducing the Agile Method to any sales team: specific objectives and accountability.

To ensure successful integration, you need to schedule regular individual and team meetings focused on keeping the entire team up-to-date. Use these alignment meetings as your building block when developing your team’s workflow and expectations.

At the start of every team meeting, set a specific objective to meet. During each limited and time-framed session, the team must narrow down what they think they can achieve in the given period and relative to their current flow of work.

Next, try to work with a realistic schedule. You can allot a one to two-week period for the team to meet your set objective. Every bi-meeting should serve to be the deadline for your internal monthly and quarterly sales target. If you are aiming for quarterly goals, you can adjust your work to a 20-day timeline instead.

 

Conclusion

Sales goals may always look intimidating and sometimes, unattainable, but with the right methodology, the whole team will learn how to face it with the right focus. Breaking up a big goal into smaller ones will always make attaining it more manageable. Every alignment meeting will help the team set reasonable goals to achieve next. Apart from organising how the team works, this also equips them with the right goal-setting mindset and technique.

 

Grow your business by making a high-impact team. SKILLFIRE has a Change Accelerator Program that will serve as your team’s roadmap to achieving remarkable results. If you want to create an incredible leadership team and with a culture like no other, connect with our team in Melbourne or Sydney today.