I was recently contacted by a company that had read one of my posts and wanted me to share one of their posts. Usually I would think this is spam and move on, but I do check first.

The reason I’m telling you this, is that the post I think is interesting and I’m willing to share for that reason.

Here Patrick Hogan, one of the co-founders of Tenfold outlines how Agile can be used in sales. Sales in general, not only Software sales.
This fact alone I think deserves a mention. It shows that Scrum and Agile in general is not limited only to Software Development, but not only that. I think he is right.

Its been over 7 years since I worked for a vendor, but I worked for one for over 10 years (SeeBeyond then Sun Microsystems), and although I didn’t work directly in sales, I was on the implementation side – I did work with the sales reps. Especially when we implemented Proof Of Concepts and being a small office, we got to know one another quite well.

I remember the sales process was all about wooing the customer. Telling them and sometimes even showing them how well the software would fit in their organisation and solve their problem. Sales cycles would be in months if not years. Especially in Australia.

Now, things are different. At least I see it from a customer perspective now that I work on the other side of the fence. There is so much open source out there now, customers are more informed. The sales process is much harder.  It requires that sales people adapt and change as required and what better way to adapt than to use Agile methods and processes.

Patrick has given a high level overview on how this can be achieved for a sales team.

I suggest you read the article for yourself.

https://www.tenfold.com/sales-leadership/agile-sales-teams