Agile sales management – why it’s the way forward

Sales management is a critical factor that contributes to the number of sales your business makes. There are many different types of sales management strategies, but one of the best ones to consider is agile sales management. In this article, we will look at what agile sales management is, and how it can transform your business’s performance.

What is agile sales management?

Agile sales management is based on creating short-term goals and working towards these goals independently while still receiving support and feedback from team members. The agile methodology originated from the software development industry. In this industry, many projects were not efficient enough, leading to industry leaders coming up with agile sales management as an innovative approach to overcome these challenges. Agile management will include:

Daily meetings (Standups)

Quick daily meetings (standups) are held in the morning to keep everyone aligned with their objectives for the day. These meetings can include questions such as:

• What are your goals for today?
• What did you achieve yesterday?
• What challenges may you face today?
• How will you achieve your goals today?

These questions will keep your team and management on the same page.

Set short-term goals (sprints)  

Short-term goals are set for your sales team. These short-term goals will be long-term goals that are broken down into smaller more realistic tasks to complete. Usually, these short-term goals are set to be completed anywhere between one day and a month. The process of setting these short-term goals is also known as (sprints).

Example – You want to improve your efficiency by 15% from the previous year. Instead of setting this goal for the year, break it up into mini-goals and objectives. Every month, set a goal to raise efficiency X% amount by setting settings tasks to better understand customers e.g., research, and obtaining high-quality leads.

Flexibility

Due to short-term goals being set for your sales team, you should have a good amount of flexibility to shift your priorities to suit your business’s needs. This will help your business adapt to changes in the marketplace to stay competitive and successful.

The use of CRM software

CRM software is essential to an agile sales management strategy as it is key to tracking your progress. If you do not have CRM software, you will not be able to track how your team members and managers are performing. Without this, you will not be able to pinpoint areas to improve to win more sales and reach your goals.

Track the right metrics

With CRM software in place, you must now identify what the right metrics are to track and set goals for. These metrics can be:

• Average meeting time with prospects (aim for 30 minutes to an hour)
• Your sales representatives talk to listen to the ratio (Follow the 80/20 rule)
• Average conversion rate (aim for between 2% to 5%)

Setting these goals and tracking these metrics will help your sales team meet the objectives required to reach your goals and objectives.

Post sprint meetings

Once your mini-objectives (sprints) are completed, have review meetings about them. Here you will be able to track what has worked, and what needs to be improved and strategize what areas to focus on.

How can you ensure success with agile management?

Agile management can pose some challenges to businesses as it requires a high level of independence and trust to be done effectively. To avoid these challenges and ensure that your agile management is effective, focus on these factors:

• Accountability

Due to your sales team working independently with these sales methodologies, they will need to practice accountability to take responsibility for their practices. This is essential as trust between your team members and management can have a huge impact on your sales results, and trust requires accountability.

• Collaboration

Although agile sales management includes a lot of independent work, they will be working towards a collaborative goal. This means that your team members should feel comfortable approaching each other to ask questions and get support where needed. This collaboration will ensure that you are able to reach your goals and objectives together as a team despite the independent tasks.

• Flexibility

Your sales team must be flexible. If you identify tasks that should be prioritized over others, your sales team must be able to adapt to this situation.

• Transparency

Like accountability, transparency is a big factor that can affect the success of your agile management Team members must be transparent about the processes they complete. For example, if a sales representative does not meet their quota, transparency is required to pinpoint the reasons why give them better support and yield better results.

Refine your sales management with TEB

TEB is a sales automation CRM software that will be able to refine your management process, streamlining tasks like tracking your team metrics, and enhancing data visibility to guide your decision-making process. Game-changing benefits of TEB:

• Track your team members – Easily view how many deals your team members are winning and losing, and the efficiency they are carrying out their tasks.
• Get a holistic view of your sales activity – See how efficiently customers are progressing through your pipeline, and discover how many leads are being converted into customers.
• Create and manage your teams – TEB will give you the ability to create, organize and manage your sales teams. You can easily split your representatives into different teams and assign actions for them to complete to drive your productivity.
• Drill down on the data you need – Generate custom reports to pinpoint the data you need. For example, generate a report on your most successful lead-generation channels.

See how these features can completely streamline your agile sales management and book a quick demo.