Increase Sales Productivity: A Comprehensive Guide to Agile Enablement Strategies

The Ultimate Driver to Increase Sales Productivity in Your Team

Increased sales productivity stands as a pivotal competitive advantage in the contemporary landscape for selling organisations. The elusive nature of productivity makes those who successfully enhance it stand out, immediately outperforming their counterparts. Productivity revolves around allocating the right resources to the right opportunities in the right manner. However, achieving this is increasingly challenging for three reasons.

Firstly, productivity becomes a challenge when the customer's path to a purchasing decision is nonlinear and iterative. The unpredictability in this journey makes it difficult for sellers to discern which skills to apply and when to apply them.

Secondly, generalised coaching from sales leaders poses a hurdle. The absence of personalised coaching makes it more challenging for sellers to determine the optimal next steps in guiding buyers toward a purchase decision.

Thirdly, involving procurement and purchasing professionals early in the solution evaluation process adds complexity to selling. Procurement professionals often hold interests different from those of key stakeholders, making it crucial to navigate these varying priorities.

Addressing these challenges necessitates an advanced sales enablement strategy, incorporating a blend of technology, developmental training, and coaching to empower sellers to take the right actions at the right time.

Enabling Sellers to Be Agile

Recent research by Gartner indicates an increase in the number of stakeholders involved in the buying process to between six and ten people. With more people come more opinions, making buying decisions complex and non-linear. To adapt to buyer expectations, sellers need the flexibility of an agile methodology. Developing agile sales methods and skills allows sellers to align with changing buyer demands while pursuing opportunities.

Sales agility involves accurately assessing opportunities based on objective criteria derived from buyer behaviour. This approach informs sellers about the next best actions to help buyers progress towards a purchase decision. Agile sellers organise their work into structured bursts of activity known as Selling Sprints, each focused on critical interactions with customers.

Selling sprints reject the idea of a linear sales process. Instead, agile sales sprints ensure sales professionals are constantly revisiting the facts and revising their understanding of the customer’s setting. This ensures sellers are more responsive, knowledgeable, and collaborative of their customer’s ever-changing needs. With constant changes in the sales pursuit, using Selling Sprints converts this unpredictability into energy that advances the sale.

Selling Sprints are the core of Richardson’s Sprint Selling programme. Backed by behavioural science, this agile framework prepares the seller to make in-the-moment adjustments to the sales process. This improves sales productivity, conversion rates, and helps reach sales goals faster.

Learn the key principles to enabling agility in your sales team in our white paper, “The Future of Selling is Agile: Introducing Sprint Selling.”

Enabling Sales Managers to Coach Agile Selling Skills

Improving productivity doesn’t fall solely on the seller. Managers play a key role in increasing the sales team’s performance. To do this, sales managers need an agile approach to coaching, ensuring interactions are contextual and highly relevant to specific opportunities.

Coaching sprints, like selling sprints, provide incremental improvements by encouraging sellers to enhance their skills gradually. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications play a crucial role in making this approach work, providing a single source of truth for managers and their sales teams.

As managers engage in coaching conversations, they can identify skills and methods that require development. Digital learning resources aid in prescribing optimal skill improvement training for each seller, with sales enablement technology platforms offering access to internal and external training resources.

Read our white paper, “Coaching Your Team to Find Their Stride” to learn how our Sprint Coaching programme equips coaches with the skills to provide lasting change in their sales team.

Enabling Effective Negotiations

Selling and negotiating coexist on a continuum, with every selling moment involving negotiation to some extent. Training sales teams to apply agile thinking to selling, coaching, and negotiations enhances their flexibility and responsiveness to changing customer needs.

An agile negotiating approach is vital today due to the increased number of people involved. Buyers have more options, giving them more leverage. Agility equips sellers to adapt to the diverse demands of decision-makers, refining and revising their approach as new information becomes available. Effective negotiating is what empowers a seller to capitalise on the full scope of work they have put into the sales pursuit.

Click here to learn about our Sprint Negotiations training programme and find out how we can train your team to apply the sprint methodology to their sales negotiation efforts.

Increasing productivity in the sales process entails focusing resources on areas with the highest possible return. Therefore, implementing an enablement plan that equips sellers to identify the right action at the right time is crucial. Agile selling, coaching, and negotiating provide a comprehensive framework to make enablement a driving force behind increased sales productivity.