How to Apply Agile Methodologies to Sales Management

Sales organizations need a unified philosophy for managing people, processes, and platforms. Enter agile methodology.

The management philosophy that has taken the IT software development world by storm appears ready to be embraced by one of the last holdouts in modern B2B organizations: the sales department.

score sales team activity

That’s the premise of our new eBook with Base, LeadGenus and LearnCore: The Ultimate Guide to Agile Sales Management.

How 5 Sales Leaders Practice Agile Management

In The Ultimate Guide to Agile Sales Management, we discuss 10 key agile management principles that enable sales leaders to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their sales force at scale.

Among Ambition clients, we found those 4 common practices among Salesforce users. They involve:

Sales KPIs
ScoreCards
Reports
SPIFs

In this blog post, we show those practices in action at 5 companies:

ChowNow
Outreach
Fitzmark
AMX Logistics
National Business Capital

Today, we are showing what it looks like in action.

Agile Sales Management in Action: Sales KPIs

National Business Capital uses Ambition as a BI solution for the entire sales organization - integrating data from Salesforce, 8x8, New Voice Media, and more.

Ambition sales technology Salesforce New Voice Media

Technology Manager Rob Percoco uses Ambition to benchmark, track and visualize real-time company performance metrics from Salesforce.

Key Quote: "It's so much easier to look at sales performance data that's not on a spreadsheet, Salesforce report, or whiteboard. Salesforce has a million different fields and foreign terminology to frontline reps. Managers and reps need at-a-glance reporting that's easy to understand."

From there, Rob defines key sales metrics and attaches them to Salesforce standard and custom objects.

Data silos are the enemy of agile sales management. Fitzmark VP Strategy and Administration Trent Roberts uses Ambition to track up-to-the-minute performance metrics from Salesforece, their in-house Transportation Management System and Telephony systems - all on one platform.

At National Business Capital, Rob builds Sales Efficiency metrics mapped from multiple Salesforce standard and custom objects - plus additional integrations such as DocuSign.

There are three sales-facing departments at National Business Capital: business development, relationship development experts, and account executives. Rob shows how he gives each role personalized metrics, KPIs, and goals based on their job functions.

Agile Sales Management in Action: ScoreCards

Outreach.io users Dashboards and Leaderboards give each Sales Development Representative a ]real-time profile, scorecard, and highlight feed, plus contextual leaderboards and performance analytics.

National Business Capital uses Ambition's Score Editor to benchmark and weight team metrics - giving his reps S.M.A.R.T goals for mission-critical sales activities and objectives.

At ChowNow, Drew Woodcock sses Ambition's Goal Management system to set, track and drive holistic ChowNow employee goals that do not directly tie to Salesforce.com data.

Rob uses Ambition to benchmark, weight and visualize real-time sales KPIs - that automatically generate holistic Scores that show macro-level performance for each rep. He also uses Ambition to define, track and display sales KPIs from Salesforce.com on personalized sales dashboards and Salesforce sidebars.

Agile Sales Management in Action: Reports

ChowNow VP Sales Drew Woodcock uses Ambition Insights to track performance trends across his sales force - taken directly form Salesforce.com KPIs.

Rob Percoco uses Ambition's Productivity Quadrant to get 360 degree visualizations of team performance and improve 1:1 coaching.

Fitzmark VP Trent Roberts also uses Ambition's Productivity Quadrant to get instant snapshots of team performance and compare activity levels with goal acquisition among team members.

At high-growth 3rd party logistics firm AMX Logistics, Vice-President Jared Moore explains how he uses Ambition Insights to track performance trends across his sales force with simple, flexible, visually compelling reports.

Agile Sales Management in Action: SPIFs

National Business Capital also uses Ambition TV to showcase team leaders, track sales contests, announce new hires, and create performance-driven sales culture.

They also use Ambition Triggers to set data-based triggers that auto-generate alerts on sales team achievements.

Watch the Full Webinar Series

Episode 5 of How I Use Ambition features Rob Percoco, Technology Manager at National Business Capital. Rob has been the Ambition product owner at NBC since June 2016. He is a former-engineer who owns full responsibility over sales operations and tech support at NBC. Watch all 5 episodes below.

In our latest episode, watch Rob Percoco walk through his entire Ambition account, take questions from Ambition CSO Jared Houghton, and explain how he uses Ambition to drive National Business Capital's business development efforts, existing client relationships, and bottom-line revenue.

Access full episode.