A pit stop for your sales team: our Sales Design Sprint recipe

We used the Design Sprint methodology, adapted for our sales team. It did wonders. We wanted to share our method and learnings. You’ll find a template you can use to apply it with your own sales team.

Co-written with Céline Bertrix

• Your sales team grew by 30%+ in the last 6 months?
• Your product evolved a lot in the past year?
• Your sales pitch hasn’t been updated in 12 months?

If the answer to any of these is Yes, then your sales team will probably enjoy a pit stop, like we did:

A pit stop is a pause for refuelling, new tyres, repairs, mechanical adjustments, a driver change… to make the car go back to the race at it highest potential.

Our answer was Yes.

So we made a pit stop to revamp our sales team’s organisation: we worked on our own version of the Design Sprint methodology to make it a Sales Design Sprint.

A lot has changed in the past year — the team grew in size, our customer base doubled, new product features were released, Covid-19 showed up… it was time to review our current roles, processes, and acquisition strategy, to be back in the race stronger than ever.

Why did we make it a priority? Let’s do the math:

Investment: 6 hours x Number of Salespeople x Average hourly wage Return: our last Design Sprint triggered +35% in revenue per sales in 3 months

Worth a try, right?

We’re certainly not pretending to be Lewis Hamilton (congrats btw!), but we hope sharing this will inspire and help other teams boost their performance too!

The Design Sprint methodology

First things first: what’s a Design Sprint exactly?

It’s a Design Thinking method used to solve challenges through collective brainstorming, rapid prototyping, and testing with users. The framework helps to align teams under a shared vision, with clearly defined goals and deliverables.

Jake Knapp, who popularised this method in the book “Sprint”, refers to it as no less than:

The ‘greatest hits’ of business strategy, innovation, behavioural science, and more — packaged into a step-by-step process that any team can use.

It has been used by iconic companies — such as Lego, Slack, Uber and Airbnb — not just for product design, but also to streamline processes, align teams and improve internal communication. Today, all kinds of companies, big and small, across various industries, have adopted this method.

The goal is to progress from Problem to Tested solution rapidly, with a small team and a week-long agenda:

1. Monday: Understand — map out the problem, choose issues to address
2. Tuesday: Ideate — sketch competing solutions
3. Wednesday: Decide — decide which sketches are the strongest
4. Thursday: Prototype — hammer out a realistic prototype
5. Friday: Validate — test it and get feedback from real customers

This methodology really has unlimited uses. It can be used to validate business models, design apps, develop new ideas, drive organisational change…

The Design Sprint, revisited… for our sales team

Our sales team almost doubled in the last 3 months, so we wanted to get the team fully aligned on the vision and on the priorities, address any friction or concern within the team, make planning more efficient, and move forward.

That’s when the Design Sprint method came into action.

Client acquisition and retention are definitely some of the areas that can benefit from the Sprint methodology, so we adapted it to fit our needs:

Instead of the usual “Problem stating” to “Testing” route, we set-up one-hour long session per day to tackle pre-defined topics:

1. Monday: Goals, Values, Clients — decide on our main expectations and the objectives for this design sprint, (re)determine the team’s values and the company’s target clients
2. Tuesday: Product marketing — reconsider the naming of our different products, discuss the pros and cons of our two current business models
3. Wednesday: Business model — review pricing, discount policy, and terms of service
4. Thursday: Sales funnel — optimise sales funnel processes
5. Friday: Roles definition — clarify the responsibilities of each sales, clean any overlaps
6. Conclusion: Based on these previous steps, determine the resulting deliverables and plan for them

So in just one week, we aim to generate tangible ideas, as well as the strategies to execute in the coming months, that will boost our productivity and eventually be reflected in our revenues figures.

How to organise a Sales Design Sprint

6 hours to reorganise all our processes… that’s a lot to tackle in a short time frame — needless to say that structure and efficiency are key.

1. Setting up the scene

Two key roles should be assigned to ensure a smooth process:

• Decider: he will have the final say and will help make the decisions stick, especially when the rest of the team can’t find a common ground
• Facilitator: he organises all the sprint sessions and will manage the whole process by acting as the time keeper, leading the conversations, and ensuring that everyone is playing their part

2. Before each session

• Objectives: the facilitator states the session’s objectives and expected output depending on the theme addressed
• Homework: the facilitator writes key questions that will help reach these objectives, then each of the team members sends his answers before the actual Sprint session. That allows us to take the time need to reflect on them, and form an opinion with a level-headed approach, not just in the rush of the brainstorming

3. During each session

• Alignment: we all start by reading in silence the answers brought up by each (and summarised by the facilitator), in order to be exposed to all view points and be ready to discuss them
• Problem-solving: we dig into each topic, brainstorm in round tables — while striving to support our arguments with as much detail as possible (metrics, client feedbacks, concrete examples…)
• Summary: at the end of the session, the facilitator makes sure all objectives were tackled, sums up the decisions taken and clarifies the resulting next steps

That’s how our Sales Design Sprint is organised. Now if you’re curious to know the different issues we addressed and how we solved them, check out our notes for each session: Our Daily Sessions Notes

Wrapping up the Sales Design Sprint

Last but certainly not least!

We added a 6th session, one that marks the end of the Design Sprint and serves 2 purposes: to ensure expectations were met — by reviewing all the overall objectives we had laid down for this Sprint, and making sure they were achieved — and to make key decisions actionable, here’s how:

1. Go over all the deliverables identified at the end of every session, and for each, assign a:
   1. Priority: High (do it asap) / Medium (do it in the next 6 months or if an opportunity comes along) / Low (no action for the moment)
   2. Time needed for completion
   3. Estimated Time of Arrival: based on Time needed and Priority (a low priority task will be done later)
   4. Owner: taking into account who is relevant for the job, and who is willing to do the job
2. Put this on paper, to ensure transparency and facilitate tracking (see example below)
3. Track it at each Weekly meeting, during which everyone shares his/her progress

Excerpt of our next steps tracker

Our feedback on the Sprint session

It’s efficient. It cuts out all ineffective discussions: no time for dreadful meetings that take up hours and leave you with little time to get anything done. This method forced us to make critical decisions and solve problems fast, and in a collaborative manner.

A six-day sprint forces all of us to focus and work towards realistic and tangible goals by the end of the week.

💡 Key learnings & Best practices

With hindsight, what made the Sprint process efficient and useful?

• Define each session’s topics clearly: after the team identifies the Sprint’s broad objectives, based on its needs, the facilitator should assign 1–3 topics derived from these objectives to each session. It helps making sure the discussions stay on track and don’t deviate from the relevant issues
• Don’t make big decisions in the first sessions: they’re designed to set up the groundwork and raise questions — sometimes it’s best to sleep on them, and some of the answers will come naturally in the following sessions
• Do your homework beforehand: showing up with thought-through opinions and reading other’s insights at the beginning of each session allows for qualitative brainstorming and fast decision-making
• Be clear about decision-making: some topics are addressed just for brainstorming (e.g. pricing policy), others must be closed with a clear decision (e.g. deal ownership process). Specifying which topic falls into what category would help structure the discussion and avoid frustrations if no decision is made
• Write key decisions and track the next steps: all the decisions and resulting next steps should be written on paper for future reference. Also, assigning an owner and objective KPIs/quantitative targets to each next step and tracking progress at each Weekly meeting ensures the job will be done

It’s a great exercise for any startup that’s facing a massive growth, and that sees its ambitions confronted with the difficulties of organising an ever-growing sales team. Adapting the methodology to large teams can be done by dividing it into groups of 8 people, and assigning them a specific topic (e.g. Internal processes / KPIs / Acquisition funnel…) — so each group has its own issue to tackle over the course of its own Sprint session.

There comes a time when a pit stop is needed to pause, refuel, change tyres, and make your sales machine the best-performing car in the race.

Perhaps most importantly, this Sprint had a massive impact on the team’s drive: it motivated the troops, spread good vibes and mades us want to conquer the world.

Want to conquer the world too?

Use this template, gather your troops and prepare for battle!