Agile Sales and Marketing Group Is Founded
The inaugural meeting of the Agile Sales and Marketing Group began to set out the principles and assumptions of the group. Members agreed that interest in Agile Sales and Marketing came from a demand on businesses to pivot quickly in response to market forces that are accelerated by web consumerization.
Atlanta, GA., Jul 19, 2017 — The Agile Sales and Marketing Group hosted its inaugural meeting at the OneSpring headquarters at Avalon. Eight of forty-nine members attended, sales professionals with diverse backgrounds ranging from senior executives, sales engineers, project managers, marketers, and account executives. Members discussed how sales and marketing departments are engaging currently with Agile, sharing personal stories about their organizations. Members also expressed a desire to learn and to spread the same principles and methodologies across sales and marketing departments. Many attendees have experience with delivering projects using Agile principles and scrum methodologies and have been impressed by the results; however, very few have adopted the ceremonies and structure into sales, or marketing, and even fewer into both.
The motivation for joining the Group was predominantly similar. Consensus focused on the demand on product owners to pivot quickly in response to market forces that are accelerated by web consumerization like a forest fire by heavy wind. Many members see the stereotypical “lone wolf” approach to sales as obsolete. A more adaptive approach around go-to-market efforts is necessary, the continuous collaboration of a team whose members are focused on a shared goal. Attendees also agreed on a significant upside of more fluid, integrated sales and marketing, naming benefits to efficiency and effectiveness.
The Scrum methodology emphasizes a higher level of team engagement and lateral accountability across team members, structuring accountability up the hierarchy and also across the organization by delivering team-wide visibility into each task that needs to be done, all team members seeing what pieces of the project remain, as well as the other members responsible for completing each piece.
In a classic time-box constraint, the Agile Sales and Marketing Group self-organized, quickly focusing on the value of the three organizational pieces of Agile: the stand-up, the sprints, and the backlog. However, time expired on the backlog discussion which was put into the parking lot for next month's meeting.
John Kosar, ALTAVI VP of Sales and Marketing, drew the short straw to be the presenter on the process of organizing the sales backlog at the next meeting. The group then was led through an ideation session by Rob Phillips, AgileCraft. The outcomes for the second meeting of Agile Sales and Marketing Group were written on post-it notes and photographed so that all group members would have access.
About OneSpring
OneSpring empowers and inspires you to create the best software that advances our world. We are committed to making a positive impact by helping individuals, corporations, and government agencies create the best software possible.
About ALTAVI, Inc.
A B2B sales operations and sales enablement consultancy, ALTAVI bridges the gap between business strategy and sales execution. The Sales Operations practice focuses on integrating business functions with the voice of customer and in alignment with desired business outcomes; Sales Enablement develops the information, content and tools that help make the sale, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Configure-Price Quote (CPQ), and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM).
About AgileCraft
Our mission at AgileCraft is to Simplify Software at Scale by bringing your business and your software development organization together in one intuitive platform.