My idea of managing a sales team with agile methodology that will bring focus, discipline and empowerment to the team.

1. Business Architecture Series
Agile Sales and Business
Development
Build effective sales team learning
from agile development methodology
wintonjkt@gmail.com

2. Current challenges
● Sales update status happens weekly or
biweekly
● Resources are working on low value deals
and non-deal closing activities
● Too many directions to the team causes
disorientation and lost focus
● Late acknowledgement of a failure in
achieving the quota

3. Agile Sales
● Applicable for smallest sales unit in the
organization
● Small team members (max 10)
● Team still has freedom to determine the tasks
needed to achieve the result
● Transparency acknowledges people's effort, not
only the number achieved

4. Scrum Agile model in Application
Development

5. Scrum Agile model in Sales and
Business
Quarter Deals
Backlog
Monthly Deals
Backlog
Daily Meeting
Achieving Annual
Target

6. Terminology mapping
● Backlog
● What deals we need to close in this quarter?
● What deals we need to develop in the coming quarters
● Story
● High level goals to close the deal
● Task
● List of activities to achieve the story
● Impediment
● What issues or any blockage to meet the target

7. Terminology Mapping
● Release
● Final number we deliver to the business (annual number)
● Sprint
● Month, Quarter or Half Year
● Scrum Master
● Sales Manager
● Team
● Sales, Tech Sales, Sales Operations, Marketing

8. How to benefit from Agile
Methodology in Sales and Business
● Always have list of goals and tasks to achieve the goal
● We can track down to the most detail level
● Daily Meeting – 30 minutes daily call with the team to update
status and task distribution and prioritization and another 30
minutes sales manager meeting for inter division interlock
● Create urgency with the team, instead of weekly call, short 30
mins call with the team will help the team to prioritize the target
of the day
● Helps the team to focus on top 5 highest priority tasks
● Time keeping must be sharp to allow the team to focus on
execution
● Sales manager – responsible to clear all impediments, find
out internal bottlenecks, direct the team to achieve the goal
● Ensure the management does their job

9. Some Rules
● All team must attend the Daily Meeting –
current technology allows everyone to join
meeting from any location
● Allow change to take place at anytime –
because we are running business and not
developing software
● Allow the team to speak out on the tasks
needed to close the deal
● Sales manager helps prioritizing and direct the
team's focus

10. Simple
Roles
- SCRUM MASTER
(Sales Manager)
- SCRUM TEAM
(Sales, Tech Sales, Sales
Ops, Marketing)
picture by exfordy

11. Scrum
Master
(Sales
Manager
)
Servant leader
Team protector
Troubleshooter
Scrum guide
picture by Orange Beard

12. Scrum
Master
(Sales
Manager)Remove impediments
Prevent interruptions
Facilitate the team
Support the process
Manage management

13. The Team
(Sales
Team)
Small (5–9 people)
Colocated - Cross-functional
Self-organized - Full-timepicture by ewen and donabel

14. The Team
Define tasks
Estimate effort
Progress Deals
Ensure quality
Evolve processes

15. Team Commitment!
TEAM DEFINE THEIR OWN RULES OF WORK
TEAM HAS THE FULL CONTROL OF WHAT THEY DO
TRANSPARENT
TEAM MUST COMMIT TO DELIVER
MAKE CONTINOUS IMPROVEMENT

16. The
Challenge!
Looks Simple, But It Is Hard
No Silver Bullet
Need Process
Takes Time
picture by a2gemma