My name is Marina Alex, and I come from the world of sales. For more than 10 years, I worked as the Head of the Sales Department in a large company before transitioning into my agile career. I love sales, and for the last six years, I have been helping different companies around the world apply agile in sales.
I am the creator of the SWAY system, which helps organizations apply agility in sales. In this slide, you see many numbers because salespeople speak in the language of numbers. They use numbers when explaining or selling something. That’s why the first secret to inspiring your sales team to be agile is to communicate with them through numbers. Today, I will share some numbers on how agile increases sales, discuss the difficulties of this journey, and give you a few pieces of advice on how to inspire your sales team to change.
Understanding Our Audience
My first question for the audience: how many people here are from sales? If you are from the sales department, please type it in the chat. If you are from IT or a different department, please do the same. Let’s see who is in our audience today.
(Pause for chat responses)
Okay, I see the chat now. Charles, could you help me by summarizing how many people we have from sales and how many from IT?
Charles: Most of the people are from IT.
This situation is common worldwide because IT created agile almost 20 years ago. Agile transformations in IT started much earlier, while in sales, we are just at the beginning of this journey. Before I explain how we apply agile in sales, let’s first look at what sales teams typically look like.
Traditional Sales vs. Agile Sales
I’m going to show you a video. After watching, please type in the chat whether you recognize your sales team in the video or if your sales department operates differently.
(Video plays)
Did you recognize your sales department, or does it look different? This is a typical sales department in many companies around the world. When we apply agile in an organization, even if we start with IT, agile is about mindset and communication with customers. Even if we introduce agile only in software development, we must also bring agility into sales because salespeople are the ones communicating with customers.
I have seen many organizations where only the software department was agile, while sales was not. This led to significant miscommunication because of differing mindsets. I believe that when starting an agile transformation, the sales department should be included from the beginning. Throughout my presentation, I will explain why.
Changing the Sales Mindset
How do we change the mindset of salespeople? On the right side of the slide, you see an image representing IT—collaborative, agile, and customer-focused. On the left, you see a traditional salesperson who focuses only on money, KPIs, and short-term sales. The first step in change is explaining that agile is not just for IT—it is a mindset. Agile is how we think and work.
We can use different tools—Scrum, Kanban, SWAY, and others—but the core idea is to change the mindset of the entire organization. Business owners, security personnel, and even the receptionist should think with an agile mindset.
Now, I will share a case study on how we applied agile in sales and increased revenue. This is a real story of how we implemented agility in sales, introduced over 1,500 innovations, created competitive advantages, and transformed different departments into a unified team.
Case Study: Applying Agile in a Sales Department
The company in this case study had been in the market for 20 years, with 1,300 employees. They produced and sold ceramic tiles. When we started, the sales department was struggling—they failed to meet sales targets, had frequent conflicts with other departments, and operated like the traditional sales team shown in the video.
One day, the business owner read an amazing book about Scrum and decided to apply it in sales. He had seen how well Scrum worked in his software department and wanted to bring the same approach to sales. He contacted me and said, “Marina, I have five large sales departments, and I believe we need to apply Scrum to change their mindset.”
Instead of Scrum, we applied the SWAY system, which adapts Scrum for sales and business. Unlike IT, sales does not have a "product backlog." Instead, we created a sales backlog with clear prioritization of business goals, customer value propositions, and innovation initiatives. Each quarter, sales teams focused on applying new IT tools and improving customer experience.
How We Implemented Agile in Sales
Our sales team worked in one-week sprints with a planning session every Monday, daily 15-minute standups, and retrospectives. We introduced agile roles, including a Business Owner (visionary), a Coach, and a Team. Each team had two key goals: financial performance and customer satisfaction.
Initially, sales were down by 43%. The big question is: what happened when we applied agile?
(Pause for chat responses)
Yes, Martin, you are right! At first, sales dropped even more. This happens in almost every company and country where we introduce agility in sales.
Challenges in Agile Sales Adoption
Salespeople love quick fixes and tools. They often think agile is a magic pill that will automatically increase sales. However, they soon realize that agility is about changing their mindset, communication style, and interactions with customers and other departments.
Other key challenges:
- Salespeople are used to working individually with individual KPIs. They struggle with teamwork, especially in cross-functional teams.
- Management does not trust sales teams to make autonomous decisions because mistakes in sales have financial consequences.
- Sales teams focus only on money instead of understanding customer needs and delivering value.
However, as they started working as a unified team with common goals, using agile ceremonies like retrospectives and planning sessions, their sales performance improved dramatically.
The Results
Within several months, sales increased by 127%. The same people, the same budget, and the same company—but with an agile mindset and new ways of working, they tripled their sales.
Beyond revenue, the company introduced over 300 innovations per year in each sales team. With five teams, they implemented 1,500 innovations across the company. More importantly, it wasn’t just about money—it was about customer satisfaction, understanding needs, and working as one team.
When companies shift from merely selling to truly listening and understanding customer needs, they can outpace competitors by delivering the right solutions faster.
Conclusion
Agile sales is the future. When organizations align their sales, IT, and other departments under a shared agile mindset, they create faster, more efficient processes—from customer needs to product delivery. This leads to happier customers, engaged employees, and sustainable business success.
Thank you!