Using Sprints to Boost Your Sales Team’s Performance

Over the last two decades, technology developers have utilized the agile methodology to work more effectively. As sales teams are stretched thin and face change initiatives and strategy shifts, using the sprints made popular by agile can help them focus on priorities that will drive results. At the heart of this is a cadence of structured, weekly meetings between the manager and the salesperson.

Fueled by a rapidly changing digital world, sales organizations are spending significant amounts of resources and energy on strategic initiatives. Whether these involve wholesale changes (e.g., reorganizing the sales team or shifting to hybrid field-digital customer engagement) or less disruptive ones (e.g., introducing new sales quotas or adopting new sales technologies), the primary roadblock to intended impact is the failure to achieve execution excellence.

For sales teams, executing on new strategies can be quite difficult. Sales is a multifaceted job, with many choices of what to do at any moment. Demanding customers, sales managers, marketing managers, and digital nudges can push salespeople in inconsistent directions. They may choose to do tasks that are easier, such as calling on friendly accounts with modest upside, or focusing on small short-term wins rather than advancing larger longer-term opportunities. Further, salespeople can be reluctant to adopt new approaches that disrupt how they have engaged customers in the past. Results, especially with large deals, follow weeks and months after the actions salespeople take to drive those results.

A solution that has helped many sales teams close execution gaps is sales sprints – time-boxed periods of one to two weeks bookended by a one-on-one meeting between the sales manager and salesperson (or account team). The idea is to break down strategies and goals into small, more manageable tasks to help sales teams stay focused and be accountable. Sales sprints have some obvious parallels to agile sprints for technology development – both break down work into small segments and those involved meet frequently to monitor progress and adjust. But unlike agile sprints (which are used for projects with a beginning and an end), sales sprints are part of a regular management cadence for continually improving the processes of growing value for customers and driving sales.

Sales sprints sound straightforward, and they are. However, successful implementation takes work. To be effective, sales sprints must be embedded into the operating rhythm of an organization; they can’t pile on more administrative duties for sales teams. Sprints work best when the effort is supported by a centralized digital platform that connects the approach to sales management programs including pipeline management, goal setting, coaching, and rewards. Further, sales managers must collaborate with their peers across the organization to bring insights and experiences to each sprint conversation.

Sales Sprints in Action

The global steel and wire manufacturer Deacero has a vast product portfolio and longstanding customer relationships. To achieve aggressive growth targets, the company wanted to move beyond a transactional “inside-out” sales process in which its sales teams focused on getting orders for what was in inventory. Leaders recognized the need for a new market-focused “outside-in” sales strategy that would rely on anticipating market trends, and proactively prioritizing accounts.

Deacero launched “Win the Week,” a program of sales sprints to gradually introduce new capabilities (e.g., key account management, solution selling) and activities (e.g., account prioritization and planning). The goal was to ensure salesperson focus on individual customer opportunities and needs. After a short training session, sales managers started using sprints to guide their salespeople to define and complete a set of customer advances to increase pipeline value.

In each weekly 50-minute 1:1 meeting, usually on a Friday, the manager and salesperson discussed three questions:

1. What happened? For example, how did the planned actions play out last week? How did we do on pipeline progress and key result areas? What did we learn about customers and the market?
2. What’s next? For example, which prospects and customers should we focus on next week? What actions should we take? What offers and value do we need to communicate? What customer advances or progress should we seek?
3. How can the manager help? For example, what could the manager do to support next week’s planned efforts? What support is needed from the rest of the organization?

Sales managers used sprint conversations to help their salespeople break down larger, more complex sales strategies (e.g., increase product portfolio sales) into smaller, more manageable, opportunity-specific customer activities (e.g., in vertical market A, sell solution B, to account C, by meeting with decision maker D, and leveraging value proposition E). Managers ensured that weekly schedules centered around spending a greater portion of time with accounts that demonstrated the highest growth potential. Planning conversations focused on how Deacero’s full suite of products could best meet the needs of key accounts.

The success of sprints with the sales team encouraged Deacero to use sprints with more teams and across organizational levels. Sales, marketing, and manufacturing executive teams began working together in bi-monthly sprint meetings to align the business towards specific market opportunities. Sales executives then worked with sales managers to break down quarterly forecasts into salesperson-based key performance indicators.

Deacero supported the sprints with a leading CRM platform. The mindset and processes of the organization transformed to produce what the market needed, rather than to sell what was produced.

Results were stellar – with increased focus on customer advances, sales reps sold an average of 8% more product categories to each account. Within the first six months in the new organization, sales reps exceeded sales goals previously thought unachievable, resulting in a 16% revenue increase.

Why Sales Sprints Are Effective

Here is what salespeople and sales managers say about how sales sprints drive results.

• Move from strategy to execution: “Our quarterly plans before were like checking the box. I never looked at them after I had developed them … Sprints make the plans dynamic and actionable.”
• Collaborate across the business: “I’ve never had this type of conversation. Marketing and sales brainstorm together to generate ideas that move the needle.”
• Link insights to actions: “The past approach was too general and not relevant. Sprints help us stay informed on the market and focused on priority actions that help us achieve our sales goals.”
• Focus on the customer: “The weekly game planning for specific customer decision makers helps me focus on what is important in each conversation. Things don’t fall through the cracks.”

As companies across industries such as manufacturing, technology, health care, and professional services seek to drive growth in a fast-changing digital world, they are leveraging sales sprints to connect their ever-changing strategies to execution. Further, these organizations are accelerating the success of their sprints by supporting them with cross-functional collaboration, incentive compensation plans aligned with growth strategies, and CRM dashboards that help identify sales pipeline gaps. Sales sprints are helping organizations keep strategy and execution in synch, and in turn, drive value for customers to “win’” each week, quarter, and year.