Managing the Agile Salesforce in Scrum

The world of sales has become too complex to be understood and managed by a single person. Sales managers need salespeople to think, decide, and act independently. Scrum fosters participation, autonomy, and decentralized decision-making. Scrum also has checks and balances for self-organizing, autonomous teams. This chapter lays out what they are and how they function specifically in sales organizations. But even self-organized teams need leadership. The chapter details out how sales leaders can lead their sales Scrum teams to productivity and success. It suggests how targets can be set and the performance of sales Scrum teams can be managed. The suggested sales planning method is different but can be highly effective in Scrum for sales. We learn how sales planning “the Scrum way” can lead to more accurate and reliable results and how sales teams can use agile fixed-price contracts and pricing to create a win-win situation for both customers and vendors. Sales-specific requirements must be kept in mind if the transition to Scrum is to be successful. Checklists, exercises, and tools are provided that help sales organizations to manage the change. Given that “agility” has been one of the most abused words in the business world in recent years and the fact that Scrum is perceived as something specific to software development, it is not surprising that many people are skeptical about agile frameworks in general and Scrum in the context of sales. In corporate boardrooms, executive offices, shop floor cubicles, hotel bars and at dinner parties, the same statements can be heard again and again: “Sales is not software development. Scrum will not work in sales.” “Self-organized Scrum teams will do what they want but not what they are supposed to do.” “Salespeople are not software developers. They are not intrinsically motivated.” “How will self-organized teams perform when they set their goals by themselves?” “Sharing opportunities, quotas and goals—that will never work.” “Individual salespeople will slack off and hide behind others in the team.” “There is no planning in Scrum.” “I will not be able to forecast revenue anymore because iterative planning means teams will change their sales forecast after each iteration—if they plan at all.” Most concerns about the use of Scrum in sales organizations have to do with management issues: Managers are concerned that “a bunch of self-organized agile hippies” will run the sales team, doing what they want and not being held accountable for anything they do. Salespeople, on the other hand, are often rather enthusiastic about the idea of working in an “agile” sales organization. Some of them are thrilled by the prospect of breaking up encrusted structures and actively participating in company decisions. Others see the opportunity to lean back and let others do their work because—due to the same misperceptions that many managers have—they think there is less management and control in self-organized teams. Realistically speaking, there is quite a lot of management in Scrum. A short look at sales managers’ key responsibilities will help to understand what they do in general and what they must do differently in Scrum. According to Brock (2016), key requirements for sales management can be summarized as follows: Organize how salespeople work. Set up the sales organization. Set up sales territories. Set up sales processes. Enable salespeople. Set up sales systems and tools. Translate market intelligence into sales strategy. Provide content and collaterals. Manage the politics within the company. Manage salespeople’s performance. Set sales strategy and goals. Motivate and incentivize salespeople. Conduct reviews. Tackle performance problems. Develop salespeople. Run formal development programs. Coach salespeople to success. Hire salespeople. Select them. Train them. Even sales management in Scrum must cover these areas. Management in Scrum is different from traditional management, though, because it aims at different things. The sections that follow explain how sales management must change, and how sales managers can fulfill the above requirements in a Scrum setting.