Can Lean and Agile Techniques Be Applied to Sales?

In April, I had the opportunity to speak with Brad Jeavons shortly before the publication of his new book, Agile Sales: Delivering Customer Journeys of Value and Delight. Brad's book is the first to address incorporating enterprise excellence (Agile/Lean) into sales. Organizational excellence journeys have not included sales teams up until now. Brad's book provides a proven step-by-step approach for integrating Agile/Lean practices into sales to amplify customer experience and sales-team performance. The book contains many case examples from companies achieving amazing results from integrating agile into their sales teams.

During our conversation, I asked Brad what results have been achieved by applying Agile/Lean techniques for sales. Here is his response:

The best example I have seen is a retailer rocketing from 0% sales growth year on year to a growth of 70% year on year. I have seen sales teams in a highly commoditized market elevate their approach and bring value back into their dealings with customers. They went from 2% growth year on year to over 15% year on year with a 10% elevation in gross margin. The results are amazing and speak for themselves. My book Agile Sales provides good detail to help an organization bring agile into their sales team and optimize their results.

In addition, I followed up with: Why does Agile/Lean work well in sales teams similarly to operational teams? 

Agile and Lean philosophies share many common beliefs, tools and techniques. They both help people to collaborate, innovate, and amplify performance. The role that people are working in does not matter; people are people in operations as they are in sales. The Agile and Lean approaches to excellence are proven to help in sales as much as operations. Agile lends itself to sales as it evolved through major global technology organizations adopting more office-based practices. I made this connection several years ago after initially learning and applying Lean practices. I moved into an executive role within the organization I was working and started to work with my sales leaders and team members to apply Agile/Lean techniques. The results we saw were amazing. I genuinely believe that Agile can help a sales team optimize their results.

Throughout the book, I give this evidence -- analyzing many successful organizations that have applied Agile/Lean techniques to their sales teams and customer engagement approaches. I describe how all levels of an organisation can sustain their energy and effort on their key customers, how they can focus on what is most important and establish a culture of continuous improvement, innovation, and ultimately, performance.  Agile Sales provides many practical examples of how agile concepts have amplified customer experience and sales team performance. I have worked to make it easy for the reader to take the learnings and apply them to their organization.

The current environment requires us to think differently and pivot for future success. Agile Sales is a must-read for anyone directly involved in or leading sales teams. It provides ideas to help sales teams get back in the game, deliver greater value and delight and amplify performance and results.

Sales improvements will help organizations survive and thrive for the future, which may prove more vital than purely operational improvements.

What do you think of Brad's perspective? Have your sales teams applied any Agile or Lean techniques? What have the results been?