Some weeks ago, we were interviewed for an article to be published in a Digital Magazine edited by a fast-growing web agency based in Tuscany the focuses on digital innovation and e-commerce omnichannel experience. We were discussing emerging threats and opportunities deriving from the current COVID-19 sanitary emergency and economic and organizational consequences for companies in the eCommerce and omnichannel retail market. We reported our experience talking about the opportunity to reduce Digital/IT costs, improve performance and handle lock-down issues by the mean of full adoption of agile/lean-based methodologies like Scrum, LeSS and Design thinking. We were all agreed about the well-known benefits of lean/agile framework adoption for IT departments and, in some cases, for the marketing departments.
But what about the direct and overall benefits for the final customer? In particular, how agile/lean can be adopted at the beginning of the B2b engagement/buying experience to achieve an adequate win-win satisfaction both on the customer side and also on the supplier side? Finally, how to bring agile to sales?
Wearing both the supplier and the customer hat
We spent half of our professional career aimed to engage customers, listen and identify needs, ideate, propose and sell effective enterprise corporate, B2b and B2c solutions. We spent the other half one aimed to develop new corporate digital products and solutions by agile product pipeline management, technology/business advising and suppliers/stakeholders/partners management. So, both the supplier and the customer points of view follow below in terms of buying journey needs.
From the customer point of view
As a final customer I expect sales consultants to follow my buying journey in terms of effective business value other than focusing just on product features and solutions, referring to the following engagement, selling and post-selling phases:
- Value discovery
- Value proposition
- Value continuous delivery and check
1. Value Discovery
This phase refers to the ability of the sales consultant to understand my business needs/challenges and the effective e/o potential business value of an eventual proposed solution. This is possible by:
- being accredited as a qualified, honest and trusted advisor also in terms of frugality and effectiveness
- defining tailored insights into the customer business needs
- framing the conversion around sustainable business outcomes
- qualifying and quantifying business scenarios
- understanding in details my business/tech pains for driving the need for a solution
- understanding in details business/tech pains for excluding scenarios that could be too complex to be transferred to me in terms of ownership
- close preliminary agreements with me to invest effort (and eventually money – why not?) for a collaboration aimed to develop a business case
3. Value proposition
The phase consists of highlighting benefits of the one or more proposed solutions that are relevant for the business case and quantifying the real value on the basis of my input with the aim to:
- transfer to me the full ownership in terms of economical and technical evaluation
- support me in eventually change of priority of the stack of current portfolio projects in progress and/or being started (to demonstrate value is needed but not sufficient to enable the purchase)
- support me in approving, purchasing, delivery of the proposed solutions
- set-up the metrics environment for periodically quantifying value achieved
3. Value continuous delivery and check
On the basis of our experience, just a few sales consultants are used to adequately follow-up with the customer after the purchase, performing at least the following steps:
- check the status of a successful implementation
- measure actual value achieved referring to original ROI model (end eventually up/cross-sell and/or renew service subscriptions)
- help me to showcase business value externally and internally in my company
The last step is very important because sales consultants must have the capability to satisfy not just my overall company needs in terms of business/economic and technical compliance goals but also my personal ones in terms of organizational and internal stakeholder relationship issues).
From the supplier point of view
Acting as a sales director I expect sales account and customer success managers to focus on:
- increasing the number of qualified generated leads
- improving conversion rate opportunities
- reducing sales cycle time and effort
- improving percentage close rate
- reducing the discount rate and improving average sales price
- improving retention rate and churn management
- increasing cross/up-selling
As chief revenue officer I expect sales account managers to ensure performance, strategy, and alignment with all:
- the other customer front-line (marketing, technical accounting, customer service)
- the other revenue-connected departments (project/product management, development teams and other ones)
How to bring agile in sales
Agile philosophy is based on the idea of performing iterative tasks, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams focused on making adjustments and changing processes and aimed to a continuous improvement. Agile methodology is widely adopted at the technical/operations department level both for digital-native companies and for legacy companies that need to embrace digital transformation for remaining competitive in the disrupting and continuously changing digital age.
Also sales departments are started to be involved in the process in order to achieve a win-win relationship with the customer. Early adoption of agile sales provides valuable benefits in terms
- quick and flexible response to change in buying journey and customer value management cycle
- the aptitude of sharing information/data information across the enterprise in order to prevent independent business silos
- capacity to quickly and effectively measure progress
- autonomy and accountability
- adoption of a culture of transparency and innovation
- adoption of a culture of people collaboration
A proposal of Agile Manifesto for Sales follows below:
- individuals and interactions for active listening over standardized sales process based on general marketing slogans/collaterals
- effective customer relationships and value proposition over complex, redundant and too formal contracts
- win-win customer collaboration on shared value creation and business/user experience over unproductive and inflexible contract negotiation
- respond to change following the iterative value management cycle (discovery, proposition, delivery&check) over stringently following a sales plan
Also the 12 agile principles can be rewritten as follows:
- customer satisfaction by early and continuous delivery of valuable support, services, products and solutions (this remains pretty the same)
- welcome changing requirements and agreements (even late in sales and delivery) in order to assure refinements and improvements of the customer value
- manage and deliver progression about the customer value management and the buying cycles frequently (weeks rather than months)
- close cooperation between customers, salespeople and production/operations teams
- motivated sales teams are given the environment and support they need and trusted to act
- face-to-face conversation is the most efficient and effective form of communication
- progression around the buying cycle is the primary measure of progress
- agile selling promotes sustainability, with teams able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely
- continuous attention to behavioral excellence and good sales strategy enhances agility
- simplicity and frugality – the art for maximizing the work not done – is essential to keep the customer focused on the best as possible perceived/delivered value
- the best understanding of needs and positioning of solutions emerges from self-organizing teams
- regularly, the sales team reflects on how to become more effective and adjusts accordingly